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Sounds of Atoms: Life in Science

Published

Author(s)

Stephan J. Stranick

Abstract

Early in setting up our nanoscience laboratory at Penn State, we were frustrated because we could not peer into the tunneling junctions of our scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) to see what the atoms were doing. We were particularly vexed when singular events, such as an atom moving on the end of the STM probe tip, confounded our data and forced us to start over. Such an event was very difficult to identify; it would be just a blip in a recorded image or a flash on an oscilloscope, and it would not be recognizable at all in the frequency spectrum of noise monitored on our spectrum analyzer.
Citation
Science Magazine
Volume
322

Keywords

"ATOM", "STM".

Citation

Stranick, S. (2008), Sounds of Atoms: Life in Science, Science Magazine, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=832426 (Accessed April 19, 2024)
Created October 10, 2008, Updated February 17, 2017