nanotechnology Pioneers

A number of key technological milestones have been achieved by working pioneers. Molecular beam epitaxy, invented by Alfred Cho and John Arthur at Bell Labs in 1968 and developed in the 1970s, enabled the controlled deposition of single atomic layers. This tool provided for nanostructuring in one dimension as atomic layers were grown one upon the next. It subsequently became important in the area of compound semiconductor device fabrication. For example, sandwiching one-nanometre-thick layers of nonmagnetic-sensor materials between magnetic layers in computer disk drives resulted in large increases in storage capacity, and a similar use of nanostructuring resulted in more energy-efficient semiconductor lasers for use in compact disc players.

In 1981 Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer developed the scanning tunneling microscope at IBM’s laboratories in Switzerland. This tool provided a revolutionary advance by enabling scientists to image the position of individual atoms on surfaces. It earned Binnig and Rohrer a Nobel Prize in 1986 and spawned a wide variety of scanning probe tools for nanoscale observations.

The observation of new carbon structures marked another important milestone in the advance of nanotechnology, with Nobel Prizes for the discoverers. In 1985 Robert F. Curl, Jr., Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley discovered the first fullerene, the third known form of pure carbon (after diamond and graphite). They named their discovery buckminsterfullerene (“buckyball”) for its resemblance to the geodesic domes promoted by the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Technically called C₆₀ for the 60 carbon atoms that form their hollow spherical structure, buckyballs resemble a football one nanometre in diameter (see figure). In 1991 Sumio Iijima of NEC Corporation in Japan discovered carbon nanotubes, in which the carbon ringlike structures are extended from spheres into long tubes of varying diameter. Taken together, these new structures surprised and excited the imaginations of scientists about the possibilities of forming well-defined nanostructures with unexpected new properties.

The scanning tunneling microscope not only allowed for the imaging of atoms by scanning a sharp probe tip over a surface, but it also allowed atoms to be “pushed” around on the surface. With a slight bias voltage applied to the probe tip, certain atoms could be made to adhere to the tip used for imaging and then to be released from it. Thus, in 1990 Donald Eigler spelled out the letters of his company’s logo, IBM, by moving 35 xenon atoms into place on a nickel surface. This demonstration caught the public’s attention because it showed the precision of the emerging nanoscale tools.