Friday 3 September 2010
An image taken from our article “Playing Pinball with Atoms” has appeared on the cover of the May issue of the renowned journal Nano letters. In the cover article we demonstrate the feasibility of controlling an atomic scale mechanical device by an external electrical signal. On a germanium substrate, a switching motion of pairs of atoms is induced by electrons that are directly injected into the atoms with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) tip. By precisely controlling the tip current and distance we make two atom pairs behave like the flippers of an atomic sized pinball machine. This atomic scale mechanical device exhibits six different configurations. For a brief overview, see Nano Today.
