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Atom Tinkerer’s Paradise

Innovations to atom-imaging microscopes create labs on tips

The scanning probe microscopes that lifted the veil on the atomic and molecular world in the 1980s have become "laboratories on a tip," offering novel platforms for manipulating matter.

 

References:

Downs, A., and M.E. Welland. 1998. Photon emission from Ag and Au cluster in the scanning tunneling microscope. Applied Physics Letters(May 25):2671.

Kolosov, O.V., et al. 1998. Imaging the elastic nanostructure of Ge islands by ultrasonic force microscopy. Physical Review Letters 81(Aug. 3):1046.

Stipe, B.C., M.A. Rezaei, and W. Ho. 1998. Single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy and microscopy. Science 280(June 12):1732.

Wong, S.S., et al. 1998. Covalently functionalized nanotubes as nanometre-sized probes in chemistry and biology. Nature 394(July 2):52.

 

Further Readings:

Peterson, I. 1997. chemical analysis with atom tweezers. Science News 152(Nov. 8):298.

______. 1997. Getting physical with DNA. Science News 151(April 26):256.

Wu, C. 1997. Nanotech: Bigger isn’t better. Science News 151(March 1):S14.

Additional information about micromanipulation is available at http://spm.aif.ncsu.edu/spmlinks.htm.

Sources:

Michael Allen
Digital Instruments, Inc.
112 Robin Hill Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93117

James K. Gimzewski
IBM Research
Zurich Research Laboratory
Säumerstrasse 4
CH-8803 Rüschlikon
Switzerland

Wilson Ho
Cornell University
Department of Physics
Clark Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853

Charles M. Lieber
Harvard University
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
12 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Michael L. Roukes
Caltech 114-36
Department of Physics
Pasadena, CA 91125

Phillup E. Russell
North Carolina State University
Department of materials Science and Engineering
Box 7531
Raleigh, NC 27695-7531

From Science News, Vol. 154, No. 17, October 24, 1998, p. 268.
Copyright Ó 1998 by Science Service.

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