Gallery: From Tiny Machines to Security, the Future of Nano-Fabrication

LOS ANGELES -- As nanomachines move beyond just prototypes, a potential industry of microscopic mass production awaits its own Henry Ford to make it a reality.

In anticipation of this demand, researchers at a nanotech lab at UCLA are mass-producing billions of customizable microparticles using a machine normally found in the microchip fabrication industry. Lead by Dr. Thomas Mason, the team has created microscale letters to illustrate the possibilities of this new process.

"The idea is to make a powerful statement about a new class of materials that exist. Solid particles that have human-designed shapes. We can design millions of different kinds of shapes, highly uniform, highly precise," explains Mason.

Mason's ultimate goal is to quickly create large quantities of parts for complicated nanomachines. These parts would include nanogears, nanoengines and other small-scale parts that are currently created one at a time in an assembly line fashion. Click through the gallery to go behind the scenes of microfabrication.

Left: Billions of microscale letters on a silicon wafer reflect light like a diffraction grating.