Thanks to recent work by scientists of Argonne-National Lab in United States, resolution using synchrotron X-ray scan tunneling microscopy has for first time approached the single-atom limit. The discovery will have significant effects on several scientific fields, including environmental and medical studies.
Also Read:Breakthrough: Synchrotron X-rays Capture Single Atom Image
Saw Wai Hla, an physicist a professor of Ohio University, says, “One of the most significant uses of X-rays is that they characterize materials.” “This is the initial time that lasers can be utilized for analyzing samples at the highest possible level of just one atom, since they were discovered 128 years earlier by Roentgen.”
An attogram, or around 10,000 atoms, was the lowest sample size which could be analyzed up to this point. This is because a single atom produces a very faint X-ray signal, which is too weak for ordinary detectors to pick up on.
Also Read:Universe Expansion Modeled by Quantum Droplets
According to Hla, it will now be feasible to track potentially hazardous compounds in environmental study down to incredibly low concentrations. He tells Physics World, “Medical research could find biomolecules causing disease at the atomic limit. The same is true.”
For spintronic or quantum applications, the group says now intends to investigate magnetic characteristics of individual atoms. According to Hla, “this is going to affect multiple research fields, including quantum computing, quantum sensing, and magnetic memory utilized in data storage devices.”(Source: Physics World)