Don Eigler | |
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| Born | Donald M. Eigler March 23, 1953 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of California San Diego |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nanotechnology |
Donald M. Eigler (March 23, 1953) is an American physicist associated with the IBM Almaden Research Center, who is noted for his achievements in nanotechnology.
In 1989, Eigler was the first to use a scanning tunneling microscope tip to arrange individual atoms on a surface, spelling out the letters "IBM" with 35 xenon atoms. He later went on to create the first quantum corrals, which are well-defined quantum wave patterns of small numbers of atoms, and nanoscale logic circuits using individual molecules of carbon monoxide. He shared the 2010 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience with Nadrian Seeman for these breakthroughs. [1]
Eigler's 1989 research, along with Erhard K. Schweizer, involved a new use of the scanning tunneling microscope, which had been invented in the mid 1980s by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, also of IBM. The microscope had previously been used for atomic-resolution imaging, but this was the first time it had been used as an active technique, to precisely position individual atoms on a surface. The technique requires vacuum conditions and ultra-cold temperatures achieved by liquid helium cooling, and was featured on the cover of the journal Nature . At the time, it was seen as a potential first step towards applications in mechanosynthesis, where chemical reactions could be manipulated one molecule at a time. [2] [3] Eigler's 2002 research, along with Andreas J. Heinrich, used a cascade of collisions of carbon monoxide molecules to perform logic operations. [4]
Eigler graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a bachelor's degree in 1975 and a doctoral degree in 1984. He was postdoctoral staff at AT&T Bell Labs for two years, and then moved to IBM where he was appointed IBM Fellow in 1993. [5] [6] He retired from IBM in 2011. [7]
He was elected in 1995 a Fellow of the American Physical Society [8] and in 1999 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [9]
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing properties of matter. This definition of nanotechnology includes all types of research and technologies that deal with these special properties. It is common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to research and applications whose common trait is scale. An earlier understanding of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabricating macroscale products, now referred to as molecular nanotechnology.
Mechanosynthesis is a term for hypothetical chemical syntheses in which reaction outcomes are determined by the use of mechanical constraints to direct reactive molecules to specific molecular sites. There are presently no non-biological chemical syntheses which achieve this aim. Some atomic placement has been achieved with scanning tunnelling microscopes.
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research organization in the world and has twelve labs on six continents.
Armand Paul Alivisatos is a Greek-American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.
In physics, a quantum mirage is a peculiar result in quantum chaos. Every system of quantum dynamical billiards will exhibit an effect called scarring, where the quantum probability density shows traces of the paths a classical billiard ball would take. For an elliptical arena, the scarring is particularly pronounced at the foci, as this is the region where many classical trajectories converge. The scars at the foci are colloquially referred to as the "quantum mirage".
The history of nanotechnology traces the development of the concepts and experimental work falling under the broad category of nanotechnology. Although nanotechnology is a relatively recent development in scientific research, the development of its central concepts happened over a longer period of time. The emergence of nanotechnology in the 1980s was caused by the convergence of experimental advances such as the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1981 and the discovery of fullerenes in 1985, with the elucidation and popularization of a conceptual framework for the goals of nanotechnology beginning with the 1986 publication of the book Engines of Creation. The field was subject to growing public awareness and controversy in the early 2000s, with prominent debates about both its potential implications as well as the feasibility of the applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology, and with governments moving to promote and fund research into nanotechnology. The early 2000s also saw the beginnings of commercial applications of nanotechnology, although these were limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials rather than the transformative applications envisioned by the field.
Gerd Binnig is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to nanotechnology:
Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) is an experimental tool for studying the vibrations of molecular adsorbates on metal oxides. It yields vibrational spectra of the adsorbates with high resolution (< 0.5 meV) and high sensitivity (< 1013 molecules are required to provide a spectrum). An additional advantage is the fact that optically forbidden transitions may be observed as well. Within IETS, an oxide layer with molecules adsorbed on it is put between two metal plates. A bias voltage is applied between the two contacts. An energy diagram of the metal-oxide-metal device under bias is shown in the top figure. The metal contacts are characterized by a constant density of states, filled up to the Fermi energy. The metals are assumed to be equal. The adsorbates are situated on the oxide material. They are represented by a single bridge electronic level, which is the upper dashed line. If the insulator is thin enough, there is a finite probability that the incident electron tunnels through the barrier. Since the energy of the electron is not changed by this process, it is an elastic process. This is shown in the left figure.
Christoph Gerber is a titular professor at the Department of Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the co-inventor of the atomic force microscope (AFM).
Electronic quantum holography is an information storage technology which can encode and read out data at unprecedented density storing as much as 35 bits per electron.
Michael F. Crommie is an American physicist, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. World-renowned for his research on condensed-matter physics, he is a recipient of both the Newcomb-Cleveland Prize and the Davisson–Germer Prize in Atomic Physics. Crommie currently directs the Crommie Research Group.
Ondrej L. Krivanek is a Czech/British physicist resident in the United States, and a leading developer of electron-optical instrumentation. He won the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience in 2020 for his substantial innovations in atomic resolution electron microscopy.
IBM in atoms was a demonstration by IBM scientists in 1989 of a technology capable of manipulating individual atoms. A scanning tunneling microscope was used to arrange 35 individual xenon atoms on a substrate of chilled crystal of nickel to spell out the three letter company initialism. It was the first time that atoms had been precisely positioned on a flat surface.
A Boy and His Atom is a 2013 stop-motion animated short film released on YouTube by IBM Research. One minute in length, it was made by moving carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunneling microscope, a device that magnifies them 100 million times. These two-atom molecules were moved to create images, which were then saved as individual frames to make the film. The movie was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Smallest Stop-Motion Film in 2013.
Franz Josef Gießibl is a German physicist and university professor at the University of Regensburg.
Andreas J. Heinrich is a physicist working with scanning tunneling microscopy, quantum technology, nanoscience, spin excitation spectroscopy, and precise atom manipulation. He worked for IBM Research in Almaden for 18 years, during which time he developed nanosecond scanning tunneling microscopy which provided an improvement in time resolution of 100,000 times, and combined x-ray absorption spectroscopy with spin excitation spectroscopy. In 2015 his team combined STM with electron spin resonance, which enables single-atom measurements on spins with nano-electronvolt precision REF1, REF2. In 2022 his team demonstrated the extension of ESR-STM to individual molecules REF3. Heinrich was also principal investigator of the stop-motion animated short film A Boy and His Atom filmed by moving thousands of individual atoms. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of the Heinrich Rohrer Medal of the Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science.
The Center for Quantum Nanoscience was founded in 2017 as part of efforts for South Korea to expand basic science research. Classified as an Extramural Center of the Institute for Basic Science, it is hosted by Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Their research focuses on exploring quantum properties of atoms and molecules on surfaces and interfaces and long-term goals of quantum sensing and quantum computation in those areas.
Heinrich Rohrer Medals are a series of awards presented to celebrate the late Nobel laureate Heinrich Rohrer for his work in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, and specifically for co-creating the scanning tunneling microscope. Medals are awarded triennially by the Surface Science Society of Japan with IBM Research – Zurich, Swiss Embassy in Japan, and Ms. Rohrer. The Grand Medal is for a single researcher who has made "distinguished achievements in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology based on surface science" but can be awarded to several individuals. The Rising Medal is presented to up to three researchers upwards of 37 years in age each with different topics. The Rising Medal is given for their outstanding efforts with the assumption that they will continue to actively work in their respective fields. Medals are given with a framed certificate and a cash prize of JPY 1,000,000 for the Grand Medal and JPY 300,000 for the Rising Medal.
Atomic manipulation is the process of moving single atoms on a substrate using Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). The atomic manipulation is a surface science technique usually used to create artificial objects on the substrate made out of atoms and to study electronic behaviour of matter. These objects do not occur in nature and therefore need to be created artificially. The first demonstration of atomic manipulation was done by IBM scientists in 1989, when they created IBM in atoms.
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