ZnO Fall Flowers
These are nanoflowers made of zinc oxide (ZnO), an important semiconductor in the electronics industry. Zinc oxide usually grows in a rod shape but on alumina, the same oxide that you can see on aluminum foil, it grows into flake and flower shapes. This image was taken by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which means that electrons bounce back to a detector after hitting the sample surface the same way light bounces back to our eyes after hitting objects around us so we can see them. These images are black and white so it was false-colored to highlight the flowers.

Audrey Forticaux, graduate student, Chemistry Department