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WOW smallest resolution found

AFM (atomic force microscopy) is definatly still around, i worked on one this summer to look at quantum dots approx. 8.5 nm wide.
 
Originally posted by: Sasha
I read that article. I wonder what ever became of Atomic Force and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy.

2 summers ago for me... I don't recall the resolution though.

Hmmm.. I was going to compare the differences in the two methods, but I'm not quite sure I understand how electron microscopes piece together the image as well as I hoped before I started typing (and then deleting and replacing everything with this lengthy sentence.)
 
The dots we were looking at were really smaller than what the system could do because the dots are smaller than the tip on the probe. But it could read small enough differences in height and we just figured out how big the dots would look to us after the tip passed over them (it would something like twice the size of the tip, i dont remember).
 
SPM can reach-sub nm resolution. A common way to demonstrate SPM for students is to scan a graphite surface, you can easily see the atoms.
In some recent experiments done at the University of Augsburg (Germany) they have shown that it is possible to improve SPM even further, they have been able to the image the electron distribution around wolfram atoms; you can actually see shape of the outermost p-orbital.

I don't have a link but I think it was published in Nature.




 
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