IBM Measures Force Required To Move Atoms

Tjeerd writes "IBM scientists, in collaboration with the University of Regensburg in Germany, are the first ever to measure the force it takes to move individual atoms on a surface. This fundamental measurement provides important information for designing future atomic-scale devices: computer chips, miniaturized storage devices, and more." I've attached a video if you are interested.

Comments

Re:too much money for too little

[AmaDaden]

In other news IBM has talked about a new "highly accurate" price system for shipping of their servers.

Re:too much money for too little

[louks]

He obviously doesn't understand Part 3...

1. Move individual atoms to make company logo

2. Determine the force required to move those atoms

3. ???

4. Profit!

Re:I hope this isnt Digg

[Stanistani]

Q: How many IBM engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: (this line intentionally left blank)

Subscribe to IBM Gold Class Hardware Maintenance for those oddly insoluble problems!

Re:That's not their first try at atomic engineerin

[Actually, I do RTFA]

They've been the first (only?) company to construct their logo with individual atoms -

To be perfectly fair to other companies, IBM has a very simple logo. It is also black and white. Now that we can finally see atoms in color, other companies can get in on that action.

If you could make circuits like that, it would be really interesting, although useless. For instance, I can imagine an Air where the CPU (at the atomic level) looked like the Apple logo tesselated again and again.

Easy problem

[johnw]

Surely all you need to do is measure the force required to move mountains and then divide by the number of atoms in a mountain?