Congratulations to the winners of the special 2021 Micrograph Award edition!

The special Micrograph Award edition in the first half of this year provided a unique chance to win twice with just one submission – and many of you seized the opportunity. We are now happy to announce the winner of this special edition!

Congratulations to Dr. Vijayakumar Anand, who swept us away with his work on Holographic Imaging. The winning micrograph shows a chaotic holographic lens (CHL), which was designed using advanced optical engineering techniques involving two steps: the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm (GSA), and optical configuration definition. The CHL was manufactured using a RAITH150 Two, which is capable of recording events in 4D which contains 3D coordinate information and a corresponding spectrum for spatially incoherent illumination.

1st place
'Chaotic Holographic Lens'
Vijayakumar Anand, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

We were also very impressed by the work of Dr. Cenk Yanik and of Olga Efremova, who took second and third places. Dr. Cenk Yanik’s SEM image showed a nanoscale device enabling full electrostatic control of a nanomechanical buckling device, while Olga Efremova contributed her work on fluxonium-based quantum simulation.

New category: Honorable Mention

As these three contributions show, it was a very tight race this time – and not just between the first three places, but also between the other contributions we received. We have never seen so many high-quality contributions as we have with this award. So instead of announcing winners of an Art Award, this time we decided to replace that category with an “Honorable Mention” category in recognition of the high-quality work shown in the pictures and in the descriptions we received. Thank you all very much! We look forward to seeing more of your work in future Micrograph Awards – maybe as soon as the end of this year?

As always, we were impressed not only by the quality of our customers’ work, but also by the variety of topics you are engaged on. From nanoscale science to quantum technologies and everything in between and beyond, the areas our customers work in are endless, and the Micrograph Award once again gave us a chance to catch some of that work. So a very big thank you to all participants! Check out all the winning images here.

Your chance to win too!

The winners received an Amazon voucher and are also still in the draw for the big final prize: a trip to a nanofabrication-related conference of their choice. And you could still win that too! Submission for the “main” Micrograph Award 2021 is already open and we are looking forward to receiving your pictures! Of course, everyone who participated now is welcome to submit additional work as well and increase their chance of winning even more.

Register for your chance to win