Mastering matter at the nanoscale

In the early 1980s, the development of scanning probe techniques gave scientists a titillating view of surfaces with nanometre resolution, igniting activity in research at the nanoscale. Images at unprecedented resolution were unveiled with the aid of various types of nanosized tips, including the scanning tunnelling (Binnig G, Rohrer H, Gerber C and Weibel E 1982 Appl. Phys. Lett. 40 178–80) the atomic force (Binnig G, Quate C F and Gerber C 1986 Phys. Rev. Lett. 56 930–3) and the near-field scanning microscopes (Dürig U, Pohl D W and Rohner F 1986 J. Appl. Phys. 59 3318–27). From the magnitude of tunnelling currents between conductive surfaces and van der Waals forces between dielectrics to the non-propagating evanescent fields at illuminated surfaces, a range of signal responses were harnessed enabling conductive, dielectric and even biological systems to be imaged. But it may be argued that it was the ability to manipulate matter at the nanoscale that really empowered nanotechnology.