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IBM Measures Force Required To Move Atoms

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:18 AM
from the i-bet-i'm-strong-enough-to-do-that dept.
IBM Science
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.
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Submission: IBM Measure Force Required To Move Atoms by Tjeerd (976354)
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  • They've been the first (only?) company to construct their logo with individual atoms [cornell.edu] - and that was in 1990. Looks like they don't give up researching the basics, despite turning more and more into a consulting/support company, not the big iron provider they've always been.

    • Re:That's not their first try at atomic engineerin (Score:4, Insightful)

      by snl2587 (1177409) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:34AM (#22588520)

      Well, yes, they did move atoms with precision in 1989 (from TFA), but moving things and measuring the force required are two different things. If you know the exact forces you can automate the process much more effectively as no manual checking is needed.

    • 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 [slashdot.org], 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.

  • As I was reading the article I was trying to visualize what
    this looked like. I was pretty frustrated until I came back
    to /. and realized there was not only an image -- but a
    freakin' video.

    So, bravo for including that video. It really added value. Thanks.
    • You should know by now that you're not actually supposed to RTFA here. The videos are incentive to prohibit this reckless behavior.

  • Should read (Score:4, Interesting)

    by esocid (946821) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:35AM (#22588536) Journal
    IBM measures force required to move a cobalt atom over a platinum (and copper) surface. I would gather that the force for different atoms is minutely different, as well as whatever friction or molecular interactions b/w the atom and surface material.

    ...the force required to move a cobalt atom over a smooth platinum surface is 210 piconewtons, while moving a cobalt atom over a copper surface takes only 17 piconewtons
    An almost factor of 13 between the two surfaces. Maybe due to the valence electron difference between the two materials, but it is right that this is important for nano-technology, something about which I know less than physics and chemistry.
    • Well, it was teflon coated copper :P
    • FTFA: To put this in perspective, the force required to lift a copper penny that weighs just three grams is nearly 30 billion piconewtons...

      Heh, next time I go to the gym, I'm not measuring anything in lbs/kgs, I'm measuring everything in piconewtons. Who's the lazy bastard now, ladies? I just lifted a freakin' penny.
    • If you stack two atoms (only one contacting the surface), how does the force required change? Three? More?
      If you chain two atoms (both touching the surface), how does the force change? Three? More?

      It would be really interesting to see if applying force in "the right spot" could make moving things around much easier.....think "Moving Men" (http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/Movingmen.html/ [asseenontv.com] but at an atomic scale.

      Layne

  • I hope this isnt Digg (Score:5, Interesting)

    by imsabbel (611519) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:39AM (#22588582)
    Because when this story was there a week or two ago, 90% of the comments were stupid jokes.

    This is a really interesting part of surface science, which in itself is more important than people give it credit for.
    The force to move that atom meassured _directly_ is something new, that will also allow more educated guess on the dynamics of self-assembling layers.

    To illustrate a point: All those nice pictures like shoing "IBM" in atoms are usually done on a nice surface (Pt-111), and cooled down to helium temperatures. At room temperatures, those atoms just around on a timescale faster than you can meassure a picture.
    This is also (or even more) the case when creating thin layers on a substrate, where there are lots of different ways for layers to grow (some substrate material combination first grow "islands", others form a single layer, and islands later, others grow layer by layer). This is hard to detect in situ (a LEED picture only shows that much...). So anything we know about those forces helps understanding this behaviour.

    And yeah, about practical applications: Everything from solar cells (organic ones have _very thin_ layers in their CIGGSE sandwitch) to lithography (dielectric mirrors for EUV-lithography is a hot topic)

  • people patents projects (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pulse_Instance (698417) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:48AM (#22588678)
    The intro to the video has "people patents projects" it is almost scary to see that patents is that entrenched in their business plans. Although at the same time IBM has done a lot to increase the research and knowledge in the whole nano-tech field. When I was a tech in a lab the prof running the lab told me that most of the time when there was some barrier that no one could cross in the nano-tech field IBM would throw a ton of money at it and solve the problem. So it is nice to see they are still working on solving problems and advancing the field.
    • and IBM can do it BECAUSE of patents.
      Patents are not 'evil' Yes some are abusive, and yes process patents and software patents have borked the system, but for stuff like this I am glad we have a patent system.

      If IBM tried to keep this a trade secrets. they might have gotten 5 years of production, if they where extremely good at keeping secrets.
      OTOH, if everything was trade secrets I suspect industrial espionage would be a much larger problem.

      • I started off with the thinking that patents as a business model are a bad thing. Then realized that there are cases where patents, when used as they were intended, are a good thing which is why I changed stance in the middle of the post. I should have finished the sentence

        Although at the same time IBM has done a lot to increase the research and knowledge in the whole nano-tech field.

        with, so it isn't that bad, they deserve to profit off of all the money they are spending.

        It would have made my change in position much more clear.

    • He'd also need a place to stand.

      Anyway, he'd never know whether he was moving the universe, or just himself.

  • Easy problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by johnw (3725) on Thursday February 28 2008, @11:09AM (#22588946)
    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?

  • SlashTube (Score:3, Funny)

    by StikyPad (445176) on Thursday February 28 2008, @11:58AM (#22589596) Homepage
    Thank God we have embedded YouTube videos on Slashdot now. Now if only we could get people to post a bunch of asinine and off-topic comments below each video...
  • From El Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain."

    IBM is blowing smoke up our five-hole.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by smaddox (928261)
      The diameter of an atom is on the order of 1 Angstrom (0.1 nm).

      Planks constant is on the order of 10^-34 J*s.

      Basically, the uncertainty is dominated by the size of the atom.

    • Re:too much money for too little (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Diomedes01 (173241) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:31AM (#22588466)
      You are kidding, right? That is one of the most ignorant statements I have ever seen. Nothing would ever be "worth it" if it had to show an immediate profit.

    • Re:too much money for too little (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sm62704 (957197) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:32AM (#22588484) Journal
      Dude, what are you doing at slashdot? This is a nerd site, not a greedhead site. This advances human knowlege, who gives a damn if it ever makes a profit?

      Does the Hubble bring profit? No. Do earth based telescopes bring anyone profit? No. Should they? Not as a primary function. There are more important things in life than money and profits!

      There was a beautiful sunrise this morning. Although nobody made any money off of it, I greatly profited by the experience. Mankind greatly profits by knowing how much force is required to move an atom, whether IBM makes any money from the exersize or not.

      Go back to the bank to worship your little green god and stop trolling us nerds.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by hcmtnbiker (925661)
        Does the Hubble bring profit?

        The Hubble not making profit is like saying that people don't pay taxes. Where do you think your money goes? NASA needs projects like the Hubble to keep getting its government checks. You're sunrise is a bad analogy, since no one created, except maybe a higher power if you believe in one.

        Secondly, I assume IBM has a bunch of ideas about how they could make money off of this. IBM is a company, and being a company it must turn a profit, otherwise it wont be a company for

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by PJ1216 (1063738) *
          the hubble doesn't bring profit. its not like it's making more money then they are spending on it. we pay taxes, yes. yes, some it goes to nasa. however, nasa is putting that money into a project that isn't making extra money, therefore its not a profit.
        • Saying "The Hubble not making profit is like saying that people don't pay taxes" is like saying "eggs are like rabbits."

          Eggs and rabbits are alive unless they're dead, that's where the similarity ends. Taxes are money and so are profits, that's where the similarity ends.

          The sunrise isn't an analogy. I did indeed profit from it, and it doesn't matter whether or not the sunrise was created. It was there, it had value, it was priceless and costless. If it wasn't costless, if I had to pay money to construct it,
        • Your argument is flawed on the basis that you are reversing cause and effect. You are saying NASA keeps doing scientific research on space primarily to receive money from the government. That's completely reversed. NASA receives money from the government in order to do scientific research. Those pretty pictures are just the byproduct of that.

      • There was a beautiful sunrise this morning. Although nobody made any money off of it, I greatly profited by the experience.

        In fairness, there is that HD channel that just shows sunrise in various locations every morning. Talk about starved for content...

        -l

        • actually, the most important thing to Ferengi is cotton buds, to only reason they are so obsessed with profit is because they have to spend so much money on earbuds.
        • It's a shame that the technology to do science costs so much, but since it does it's a good thing that some rich people see their money for the tool it is and act accordingly, instead of worshiping it.

          Kudos to Branson, Carmak, IBM's leaders, etc.
        • I never said they didn't nake money you fucking moron, I said that wasn't their primary purpose. Now get the fuck off my lawn and back to the fifth grade you stupid boy.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee (775178)
      Yeah, it's just like all that research into electrons they did some years ago. So f**king small they weight next to nothing, so how are they ever going to be useful?

    • it'll never be profitable if you think it isn't worth it to try to make it profitable.

    • Re:too much money for too little (Score:5, Funny)

      by AmaDaden (794446) on Thursday February 28 2008, @10:34AM (#22588518)
      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 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jmichaelg (148257) on Thursday February 28 2008, @11:53AM (#22589528)
      Some questions are expensive to answer. For example, how much is it worth to teleport materials at the speed of light?

      If you want to teleport something, you have to take the source material apart, atom by atom and rebuild it elsewhere, atom by atom. Can we do that? No, because we don't know how to tear something apart atom by atom, identify the atoms we've just torn off the source, transmit the x,y,z coordinates along with the atom type and put the same kind of atom at the translated x,y,z coordinates yet. We're on the way though.

      Initially, it'll be inanimate objects. UPS is currently capitalized at $75 Billion so there's a little bit of money to be made moving stuff around. Of course, why move stuff instead of just fab as needed? Once you've torn something apart, you know what you need to make as many copies as you want.

        If we ever get to the point where we can disassemble a person and rebuild people quickly enough then you're talking several orders of magnitude of value more. Take snapshots of yourself when you're especially healthy and use those as restore points for yourself. Add some patching software that merges your experiences which are stored as atom arrangements in your brain since your last snapshot and you have immortality. How much is that worth? Don't like your nose? There'll be body shops that use the photoshop equivalent to touch up your features. How much is that worth? Want a bigger cock? Not a problem. Whatever you can imagine, and then some could be possible.

      Will any of the above ever happen? Who knows? What we do know is it won't happen if we aren't willing to pay to answer the 'little' questions. Like how much force is needed to move an atom.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by IL-CSIXTY4 (801087)
      With the sizes of traces on CPU dies these days, I imagine having a technology like this waiting in the wings will pay in a few years.
    • Such a frivolous waste of money! I can't stand it when people do things that will never see a profit! That's what I tell my kids whenever they ask me to take them to the cinema or go to an amusement park or other silly wasteful things like that. They should be setting up lemonade stands on the roadside during their summer vacation.

      Why just the other day I told my wife not to have sex with me because it's a complete waste of time and energy, which could be better spent packing coins into little rolls to chan

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sm62704 (957197)
      A step forward to the Star Trek Matter Replicator.

      When you have a machine that can construct anything out of atoms or even molecules (perhaps nanometer sized machines doing the constructing, in the scale of billions of the little things), then physical property will in fact be equal to intellectual property.

      In short, the only thing that will have monetary value will be land. The "IP" wars being waged today are setting the stage for the future wars between the "have nots" and the "we have but don't want anyo
        • Since you;re working with atoms and molecules raw materials are free; even gold and platimum, which are surely in and on the dust floating around in this room, and there are gold and platinum in the computer I'm typing on. You'll have little "seeker" nanobots flying around inspecting dust and searching for the needed raw materials. As to energy, if you can make anything without cost, you can construct solar panels and windmills and batteries other such energy producers for free as well.
        • Why, then we'll build an atom constructor to assemble subatomic particles into the necessary elements.

          "Will work for electrons."
    • You're missing an importanat step in your transporter - converting mass to energy and back. We've been able to convert mass to energy since prehistoric times (a campfire converts mass to energy) but AFAIK we've never converted energy to mass.

      If we could you could conceivably unfry an egg, which would violate all three laws of thermodynamics.

      I think we'll probably break the lightspeed barrier first. That will likely happen right after Satan wins his first snowball fight, if Einstein was right.
      • Actually, what if we could move you atom by atom....physically. No "synced up particle" teleporting, no conversion from mass to energy and back, but honest to goodness movement. At that scale and along the right surface, could we theoretically approach "near instantaneous" speeds (for "small distances" like from Los Angels to Tokyo)?

        Layne
      • Maybe i'm wrong, but i'm positive a campfire DOES NOT convert mass to energy - you're just releasing chemical energy from the atomic bonds as heat. You're left with as much mass as when you started, only in a different form. If you could convert mass to energy in a campfire you'd see a lot of small mushroom clouds in the countryside :)
        • Actually, the odds are decent that somewhere in that fire, one atom fused with another.

          Of course that one atom is one out of around 10^24 atoms per cc.
          • Hold on a minute... you get energy from fission. You get energy from fusion. Damn, I'm confused. As Pogo said, "nuclear physics ain't so new, and it ain't so clear!"

            However, PLANTS convert energy to matter. I forgot about plants. But we didn't invent those, not yet anway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by boarder8925 (714555)

      Wouldn't that surface be made of, ummmm, atoms?
      I doubt yo have or will RTFA or WTFV, so I'll answer: The surface in the experiment was crystalline [ibm.com] .

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