IBM Scientists First To Measure Force Required To Move Individual Atoms

IBM Scientists First To Measure Force Required To Move Individual Atoms

IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists, in collaboration with the University of Regensburg in Germany, are the first ever to measure the force it takes to move individual atoms on a surface. This fundamental measurement provides important information for designing future atomic-scale devices: computer chips, miniaturized storage devices, and more.
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Some twenty years ago at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, in a small lab packed with high-tech equipment in the hills of Silicon Valley, IBM Fellow Don Eigler achieved a landmark in mankind’s ability to build small structures. On September 29, 1989 he demonstrated the ability to manipulate individual atoms with atomic-scale precision, and went on to write I-B-M with individual Xenon atoms, an event likened to the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk.

Now, a new crop of researchers in that same lab – with help from the University of Regensburg –have taken the extraordinary step of measuring the tiny forces needed to manipulate the atoms. These findings will be published in the February 22 issue of Science magazine.

Understanding the force necessary to move specific atoms on specific surfaces is one of the keys to designing and constructing the small structures that will enable future nanotechnologies. The problem is akin to what scientists and engineers needed to learn about construction at macroscopic sizes many decades ago. For example, building a modern bridge would be impossible without first measuring the strength of different materials, understanding the relevant forces, and comprehending how everything interacts. In the nanotechnology realm, to make structures that you want to remain rigidly in place you would use strongly bonded (“sticky”) atoms while for groups of atoms that need to move you would use atoms held in place only by weak chemical bonds.

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