Artificial atoms gain new orbitals
A wafer-thin film of organic molecules was grown on a silicon substrate. In this film, as if on a sheet of graph paper, tiny "pens"—artificial atoms — were laid out with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope.
A Tiny Lightbulb That Deposits Iron Atoms onto a Perfect Surface
Inside a microscope that sees individual atoms, it's cold and silent: the temperature is around -268°C, and the interior is in perfect vacuum. To place individual iron atoms on such a stage, you usually need a direct 'corridor' from the evaporator to the sample. But in the coldest instruments, that corridor is blocked by thermal shields, making deposition a puzzle.