IBM breakthrough captures high speed measurements of individual atoms

Technology giant IBM researchers have published a breakthrough technique in the peer-reviewed journal Science that measures how long a single atom can hold information, and giving scientists the ability to record, study and "visualise" extremely fast phenomena inside these atoms.

Just as the first motion pictures conveyed movement through high-speed photography, scientists at IBM Research in  Almaden are using the Scanning Tunneling Microscope like a high-speed camera to record the behaviour of individual atoms at a speed about one million times faster than previously possible. IBM researchers in Zurich invented the Scanning Tunneling Microscope in 1981 and were awarded with the Nobel Prize.

IBM says for more than two decades its scientists have been pushing the boundaries of science using the Scanning Tunneling Microscope to understand the fundamental properties of matter at the atomic scale, with vast potential for game-changing innovation in information storage and computation.

The ability to measure nanosecond-fast phenomena opens a new realm of experiments for scientists, since they can now add the dimension of time to experiments in which extremely fast changes occur. To put this into perspective, the difference between one nanosecond and one second is about the same comparison as one second to 30 years.

An immense amount of physics happens during that time that scientists previously could not see.

"This technique developed by the IBM Research team is a very important new capability for characterizing small structures and understanding what is happening at fast time scales," said Michael Crommie, University of California, Berkeley. "I am particularly excited by the possibility of generalising it to other systems, such as photovoltaics, where a combination of high spatial and time resolution will help us to better understand various nanoscale processes important for solar energy, including light absorption and separation of charge."