Behavior of Fe Atom
IBM Scanning Microscope Technology
IBM researchers in Zurich invented the STM in 1981 and subsequently received the Nobel Prize. For more than two decades, IBM scientists have been pushing the boundaries of science using the STM to understand the fundamental properties of matter at the atomic scale, with vast potential for game-changing innovation in information storage and computation.
“This breakthrough is important for nanoscience because processes on the atomic scale happen very fast. And while before we could look at them on the atomic scale, we could not look at them in real time. And now we can look at them in real time,” said Andreas Heinrich, a physicist at Almaden.
The ability to measure nanosecond-fast phenomena opens a new realm of experiments for scientists, since they can now add the dimension of time to experiments in which extremely fast changes occur. To put this into perspective, the difference between one nanosecond and one second is about the same comparison as one second to 30 years. An immense amount of physics happens during that time that scientists previously could not see.
September 24th 2010
