EUROPEAN harmony is under threat, albeit on a very small scale. Significant discrepancies have emerged in the way European labs measure nanometre-sized features.
Nobody disagrees on how to define a nanometre: it is exactly one billionth of a metre. But every scanning probe microscope measures the distance slightly differently, says David Robinson from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, the organisation responsible for setting measurement standards in the UK. This leads to major differences in the values people come up with, he told a conference organised by the Institute of Nanotechnology in London last week.
A scanning probe microscope…
