MICROSCOPES capable of revealing the astonishing beauty of an atom can hardly be called blunt instruments. But to date, these tools have either been too destructive or offered disappointing resolution. Now researchers at IBM have come up with a delicate method which has provided unparalleled details of the structure of a molecule.
The earliest pictures of individual atoms were captured in the 1970s by blasting a target – typically a chunk of metal – with a beam of electrons, a technique known as (TEM). Later iterations of this technique, such as the TEAM project at the Lawrence Berkeley…
