Nanotechnology

On September 28, 1989, Donald Eigler, a physicist at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, scrawled two words in outsized letters across his notebook: “DID IT!” Typically, the more excited Eigler became about an experiment, the bigger the text. A few days later, he made another expansive entry: “DID IT AGAIN!”

The “it” in question was the world’s first replicable technique for manipulating individual atoms across a surface with control. Several years prior, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer had developed a seminal tool at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory known as the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). It enabled scientists to observe materials at the atomic level, for the first time. Using a specialized version of the STM, enclosed in an ultrahigh vacuum chamber cooled to -453 degrees Fahrenheit, Eigler found that he could control an individual atom’s placement by bringing the tip of the microscope very close to, but not quite touching, atoms of the element xenon. Over the course of 22 hours, Eigler and his colleague Erhard Schweizer painstakingly applied this technique to move the xenon atoms into an arrangement, spelling out the letters “I B M.” And with that, the field of nanotechnology, which involves the study of matter on the smallest possible scale, was born.

In the decades since, nanotechnology has irrevocably changed the way we understand the world around us — and by extension, the way we understand the technology and materials we build. After foundational research like Eigler’s helped to establish the basic physics of the field, nanotechnology began to play an increasingly important role in the design of smaller, smarter and more energy-efficient transistors — as well as new materials with applications ranging from early cancer detection to alternative energy sources. And from the STM to today, IBM has stood at the vanguard of this exciting and fast-developing field.

When Binnig and Rohrer launched the first-generation STM in 1981, nanotechnology remained more or less uncharted territory. Introduced as a concept by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1959, the term was eventually coined by the Japanese scientist Norio Taniguchi in 1974 and popularized a decade later by the American engineer K. Eric Drexler. By that point, developments in the field were well underway, including the work of Binnig, Rohrer and Eigler.

In addition to demonstrating his seminal achievement of exercising precise control over an atom’s location, Eigler conceived a clever means of expressing a hard-to-visualize area of science for the general public — by way of the world’s smallest corporate logo. The discovery made headlines in both the scientific and popular press and would become one of nanotechnology’s most foundational breakthroughs.

Over the coming decades, IBM teams across the world would make almost yearly breakthroughs in this exciting new field. In 1993, IBM researcher Donald S. Bethune and NEC (Nippon Electric Company) researcher Sumio Iijima independently discovered that some transition metals catalyze single-wall carbon nanotubes, structures that conduct electricity at rates approximately 70 times that of silicon. In 1996, IBM researchers “dragged” atoms for the very first time at room temperature — opening the door for experiments conducted under less extreme conditions than previously required — while still other teams constructed ever more complex structures out of individual atoms, such as the world’s smallest abacus.

In more recent years, applications of nanotechnology have extended far beyond electronics. Nanoscale systems have been tested to improve solar energy, water purification and desalination, artificial intelligence and healthcare diagnostic tools.

In 2011, IBM researchers demonstrated that nanostructures could be used to build polymers that track down and destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as staph infections, without harming surrounding healthy cells. More recently, IBM has invested in the intersection of human biology and nanotechnology to detect viruses and cancers at the earliest stage possible using so-called lab-on-a-chip technology, which offers a simpler and less expensive alternative to existing detection techniques. It holds the potential to help physicians identify illnesses long before symptoms emerge, ensuring early treatment.

Today, it’s nearly impossible to separate nanotechnology as a distinct area of study. In the decades since IBM’s formative discoveries, the field has become a facet of many diverse avenues of innovation, providing scientists with the tools they need to make technology faster and more efficient while improving healthcare and cleaning the environment. Nano research continues to provide endless opportunities for exploration and discovery.

As Eigler remarked, “Nature is not boring. If as an experimentalist you invent something that allows you to see something no one has seen before, you will find something interesting.”