Harvard researches grow a garden of nanoscience flowers

The creation of Harvard researchers, the microscopic garden is a demonstration of how simple environmental changes, such as tweaking the temperature, can be used to precisely control the construction of tiny objects and devices.

Read the full story, and scroll through to see these magnificent microblossoms.

Scientists toiling in this invisible realm are putting their new techniques to aesthetically pleasing purposes to show they work — and capture the public’s imagination.

Grown in the lab, this nano-landscape is best seen with an electron microscope as these petals, twisting stems, and finely wrought leaves are invisible to the naked eye.

“In nature, you see many complex shapes and patterns,’’ said Wim Noorduin, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University who grew the flowers featured in the journal “Science.’’ “There’s a huge interest to grow complex shapes at the microscale,’’ by harnessing nature’s ability to create detailed and intricate structures, such as those found in a coral reef or on a seashell.

Noorduin took his cues from nature: the structure of a shell changes in response to differences in the environment. By changing the acidity of the solution and the temperature, he discovered controlled ways to make his garden grow. He even accidentally discovered, when he put a cover on a beaker to keep out dust, that controlling the concentration of carbon dioxide could alter the thickness of his flowers’ petals.

Working with materials science professor Joanna Aizenberg, Noorduin discovered that altering the acidity or alkalinity of a solution could cause crystal blossoms to grow outward into a bell shape, or to make them curl inward.

Noorduin is able to grow complex structures, such as a stem, a leaf, and a flower, all contained in a vase.