A new technology to continuously place individual atoms exactly where they are needed could lead to new materials for devices that address critical needs for the field of quantum computing and communication that cannot be produced by conventional means, say scientists who developed it.
A research team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created a novel advanced microscopy tool to “write” with atoms, placing those atoms exactly where they are needed to give a material new properties.
“By working at the atomic scale, we also work at the scale where quantum properties naturally emerge and persist,” said Stephen Jesse, a materials scientist who leads this research and heads the Nanomaterials Characterizations section at ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, or CNMS.
“We aim to use this improved access to quantum behavior as a foundation for future devices that rely on uniquely quantum phenomena, like entanglement, for improving computers, creating more secure communications and enhancing the sensitivity of detectors.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-atoms-materials-fabrication-quantum-devices.html
The smallest building block out there is the atom. Within the last 20 years scientists have learned how to move atoms individually – an amazing feat because atoms are extraordinarily small. This process is called atom manipulation.
The Invention of the STM
Before scientists could build at the atomic scale they needed a tool to help them observe it. Before the 1980’s there was no instrument or microscope that could image the atomic scale.
In 1981 the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) was invented by Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM; the pair later received the 1986 Nobel Prize in physics for this accomplishment. The STM has ultra-high resolution and can image single atoms. This instrument allowed scientists to view a world that they could not view before: the world of the nanoscale. Many people believe that the invention of the STM was the birth of nanoscience.
https://chem.beloit.edu/edetc/nanoquest/atom_manipulation/index.html
h/t Digital mix guy Spock