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Windows on the Atomic World |
| Section: NATURAL SCIENCE / AT THE EDGE |
| Author: Gerald R. Campbell |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 6/1/1991 |
| Size: 2,716 Words, 16,603 Characters |
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Since the time of the Greek philosophers, scientists have spoken of atoms--the "indivisible units of matter" that are the building blocks of all material things. Most people have seen drawings in chemistry texts showing atoms and molecules, but no one ever seriously expected to be able to see single atoms. The thought of moving a single atom in a controlled fashion was dismissed as farfetched, mere science fiction fantasy.
Until now, that is.
With the development of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in 1982, a wide range of atomic surfaces became visible for the first time. Such claims were initially viewed with skepticism by a conservative scientific community. As Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer, coinventors of the STM, put it in their 1986 Nobel Prize lecture, "It seem...
. . .
... on every lab bench, and will banks of them manufacture our ultramicro computers? There very well could be--at present, the number of scanning probe microscopes is nearly doubling every year. But right now, no one knows. Says Hansma, "It's an exciting field, a very young field, less than 10 years old. Part of the joy of working in the field is seeing the fast pace of wonderful innovations." vbcrlf
(812 of 16,603 characters)
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