20 Years of Moving Atoms, One by One

September 30th, 2009 admin

> Sometimes genius looks like an elegant equation written in chalk on a blackboard. Sometimes it’s a hodgepodge of wires, canisters and aluminum-foil-wrapped hoses, all held together by shiny bolts. Despite its homebrew appearance, this device, a scanning tunneling microscope, is one of the most extraordinary lab instruments of the last three decades. It can pick up individual atoms one by one and move them around to create supersmall structures, a fundamental requirement for nanotechnology. Twenty years ago this week, on Sept. 28, 1989, an IBM physicist, Don Eigler, became the first person to manipulate and position individual atoms. Less than two months later, he arranged 35 Xenon atoms to spell out the letters IBM. Writing those three characters took about 22 hours. Today, the process would take about 15 minutes. “We wanted…


Originally posted on Wired

 
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