New technique leads to nanotechnology being made more efficiently than ever before

The Breakthrough

Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a new way to manipulate thousands of atoms simultaneously, which is a stepping stone towards building nanoscale electronic devices faster and much easier under room temperature. The scanning tunneling microscope or STM is used by having the tip inject electrons on a surface that has benzene molecules. The careful comparisons of the atomic positions of benzene molecules precisely before and after the injections has allowed the team to directly observe how high energy electrons behave for the first time in room temperature. 

The Implications

The new technique, which was pioneered at the University of Bath together with researchers at the University of Birmingham, is capable of moving numerous amounts of atoms at the same time and with the same precision. These accurate findings have allowed the researchers to understand the underlying fundamental physics of hot electron behavior. It also paves the way towards building new nanotechnology with atomic precision.