Silicon mechanosynthesis demonstration (paper)
"Mechanical Vertical Manipulation of Selected Single Atoms by Soft Nanoindentation Using Near Contact Atomic Force Microscopy"
by Noriaki Oyabu, Óscar Custance, Insook Yi, Yasuhiro Sugawara, and Seizo Morita
The special thing about this paper is that
- it was not about just swapping around very similar atoms – like Si and Sn (done in an other paper)
- it was not about just removing a single hydrogen atoms from a passivation layer and then depositong silicon by a gas phase process (done in an other paper)
- it was a bout really ripping a whole silicon atom out of the surface and putting it back
Make no mistake:
- achieving this feat with the technology of back then and (still now 2021) was probably many many many hours of work.
- this is still all very sketchy and statistical – a lot of unsuccessful tapping involved
Technology will have a long way to go till something like this works really fast and reliable,
meaning at MHz level reaction rates and low error rated akin to digital logic.
But we'll eventually get there. Just like we got from relays to nanoscale transistors on chips.
Actually it seems astounding that a fully embedded Si atom can be ripped out like this.
For why see the discussion the related page: Atomically precise disassembly
External link to the paper
Ripping out and redepositing sigle silicon atoms on silicon surface:
Noriaki Oyabu, Oscar Custance, Insook Yi, Yasuhiro Sugawara, Seizo Morita, "Mechanical vertical manipulation of selected single atoms by soft nanoindentation using near contact Atomic Force Microscopy," Phys. Rev. Lett. 90(2 May 2003):176102; http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v90/e176102
pdf on academia.edu (78K)
