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How small is the smallest pair of scissors that you’ve ever seen? An inch? A centimeter? Well, things just got a way lot smaller with what a group of Japanese scientists have made. They’re so small that you can’t use them with your bare hands. In fact, they’re so small that they’re used to cut molecules.

The scissors are just three nanometers, or billionths of a meter, long. This makes them more than 100 times smaller than a wavelength of violet light.

Just like real shears, the molecular device that researcher Takuzo Aida at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have designed consists of a pivot, handles and blades. The team presented their findings today at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago.

The blades are made of rings of carbon and hydrogen known as phenyl groups.

The pivot is a molecule dubbed chiral ferrocene, which essentially sandwiches a round iron atom between two carbon plates. The carbon plates can rotate freely around the iron atom.

The handles are organic chemical structures dubbed phenylene groups. These are tethered together with azobenzene, a molecule that reacts to light. Shining visible light on the scissors makes the azobenzene expand and drive the handles apart, closing the clipper blades. Shining ultraviolet rays on the shears has the opposite effect.

Quote from Livescience

Such a tiny scissors can have many uses and larger versions of it might even be attached to miniature robotic devices that can be sent into the body to remove tumors and treat other diseases.  Reminds me of the movie Inner Space.

Now, grandma, where did you put the scissors?

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