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Crystals And Lasers Help to Create Nanostructures

Spanishfly writes: "Physicsweb.org is reporting that Dieter Meschede of the University of Bonn in Germany and colleagues have created a three-dimensional interference pattern (holographic crystal). A cesium atom laser is fired into the crystal and uses the pattern generated on the crystal to position the atoms from the laser to create nanostructures. This new technology could be the future of optical circuits and could become an integral part of the semiconductor industry."

2 of 7 comments (clear)

  1. fast pace looks promising by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There seems to be a fast pace to the announcements from the laser & crasytalography world atm. I'm pleased because It's the kind of buzz and hype we need to support the flaky tech industry.

    XP has failed to set the world on fire. I think the Linux buzz has been and gone (probably for the best, consolidation is what we need now).

    The CPU people seem to have hit a plateau. We just don't seem to need any more raw speed. The GFX people have hit the same place too me thinks. HD storage density is now at a place where we have more storage in our computers than we can readily generate data to fill. We've got broadband. Okay you can never really have too much of these things but ram & hd doublers are very much a thing of the past and my network connection is rarely maxed out.

    What does that leave?
    What technologies are going to drive us to spend?

    If I knew I wouldn't say, I'd be investing ;)

    Roll on crystalline storage and optical computers!

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  2. Thank the X-ray Crystallography guys for this by CowbertPrime · · Score: 2

    X-ray Crystallography and Diffraction studies enables us biologists and other structural-materials scientists to resolve atomic structure in say, proteins. We can now use the interference data collection methods that we normally use for near monochromatic x-rays diffracting through our favorite protein crystals to do other nifty things.