The scanning-tunneling microscope (STM) has provided scientists and engineers with the ability to directly manipulate individual atoms. That ability has famously allowed engineers to produce the smallest writing that was thought to be possible: individual atoms lined up to spell out, among other things, the name IBM. Now, researchers from Stanford University have one-upped their peers in private industry by manipulating molecules so that they created a hologram based on interference of electron energy states. Using this technique, they created a single hologram that projects Stanford’s S and U in the smallest letters ever written.
Holograms are based on interference patterns—when anything that travels as a wave interacts with a similar wave, the two create areas of where the peaks and troughs enhance or cancel each other. In a standard optical hologram, the waves are light, and an appropriately prepared medium will direct the interference so that it projects brighter and darker areas into a three-dimensional space. But, as we noted, it’s the ability to undergo interference that matters, meaning similar techniques would work with something other than light.
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