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Nanotech
Facts
Using the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), electron formations
can be viewed. At left, electrons are surrounded by 48 iron atoms,
individually positioned with the same STM used to image them. The
image was created and colorized at the IBM Almaden research laboratory
in California.
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The transition of nanotechnology research into manufactured products
is limited today, but some products moved relatively quickly to
the marketplace and already are having significant impact.
For example, a new form of carbon, —the nanotube—was
discovered by Sumio
Iijima in 1991. In 1995, it was recognized that carbon nanotubes
were excellent sources of field-emitted electrons. By 2000, the
“jumbotron lamp,” a nanotube-based light source that
uses these field-emitted electrons to bombard a phosphor, was available
as a commercial product. (Jumbotron lamps light many athletic stadiums
today.) By contrast, the period of time between the modeling of
the semiconducting property of germanium in 1931 and the first commercial
product (the transistor radio) was 23 years.
The discovery of another nanoscale carbon form, C60, the fullerene
(also called the buckyball) brought the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1996 to Robert F. Curl Jr., Sir Harold
W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley. It also started an avalanche of
research into not only the novel characteristics of C60, but also
other nanoscale materials.
Nanoscale science was enabled by advances in microscopy, most notably
the electron, scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopes, among
others. The 1986
Nobel Prize for Physics honored three of the inventors of the
electron and scanning tunnel microscopes, Ernst Ruska, Gerd Binnig
and Heinrich Rohrer.
| Exploring
the World through Microscopes
The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is one of a
number of instruments that allows scientists to view
and manipulate nanoscale particles, atoms and small
molecules. The STM, which was first used in the mid-1980s,
allowed scientists not only to see details of atomic
structures, but also to manipulate those structures.
STMs have opened the door to images of what happens
out of sight of the naked eye.
A precursor instrument, the topografiner, was invented
by Russell
Young and colleagues between 1965 and 1971 at the
National Bureau of Standards (NBS) [currently the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)].
Read
more about STMs at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, National
Renewable Energy Lab , Purdue
University, the IBM
STM Gallery. Other forms of microscopy used in nanoscience
can be found on the National
Center for Electron Microscopy at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Lab, UNC-Chapel Hill and Renssalaer
Polytechnic Institute websites.
See also the Nobel Prize website for a microscopy
timeline and general information on microscopy;
Molecular
Expressions--Science, Optics and You, Florida State
University; and The
Nanoworld Center for Microscopy and Microanalysis
(University of Queensland, Australia).
See the Boston Museum of Science site for scanning
electron microscopes and numerous microscopy
resources, and the SPM
Animation Gallery.
See
the UCLA Physics Dept. site for information on the field
emission electron microscope.
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Nobel laureates Gerd Binnig (top), Heinrich Rohrer and Ernst
Ruska.
© The
Nobel Foundation
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