 |
IBM scientists receive The Economist Innovation
Award for providing the first glimpse of the nanoworld |
The invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) in
Zurich in 1981 marked the birth of nanoscience and nanotechnology
Zurich, Switzerland, 14 September 2004—Three scientists
of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory have been awarded this year’s
Economist “No Boundaries” Innovation Award in San Francisco.
The prize was bestowed to Gerd Binnig, Heinrich Rohrer and Christoph
Gerber for the invention and development of the scanning tunneling
microscope (STM), which marked the birth of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
The Economist Annual Innovation Summit & Awards celebrates the
individuals and best practices that drive the most successful innovations
that transform our global economy.
The invention of the STM in 1981 afforded scientists their first
glimpse of the world of atoms. The revolutionary microscope, for
which Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer received the 1986 Nobel prize
in physics, has expanded the boundaries of our knowledge by revealing
the topography of surfaces and processes on the atomic scale in
3D.
The STM, however, is not a traditional microscope. Rather than
showing a direct image, it uses a very sharp stylus to scan the
surface of a material. Recording the vertical movement of the stylus
makes it possible to study the structure of the surface, atom by
atom.
As the STM evolved, its capabilities and those of related instruments
have greatly enhanced the abilities of research scientists to explore
a wide variety of atomic-scale structures and properties, and even
to manipulate individual atoms and molecules. In 1990, IBM scientists
famously went on to use the STM to position 35 xenon atoms to spell
"IBM".
STM technology out of the IBM lab in Zurich now plays a key role
in nanoscience and nanotechnology, with hundreds of companies worldwide
developing instruments for applications in a wide range of fields
such as semiconductor physics, microelectronics, chemistry and biology.
IBM itself is furthering the practical applications of STM-based
technologies. One is the so-called Millipede project. The aim of
this project is to develop a high-density storage system based on
micromechanical components derived from scanning probe instruments.
Tiny depressions melted by a tip into a polymer medium represent
stored data bits that can be read by the same tip. This thermomechanical
storage technique is capable of achieving data densities on the
order of hundreds of Gigabits per square inch, well beyond the expected
limits for magnetic recording.
|
