Introduction to Scanning Probe Microscopy

Abstract

Richard Feynman foresaw the enormous potential of studying the physics of structures at the nanometer scale in his talk ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ at Caltech in 1959 [1]:

But I am not afraid to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately — in the great future — we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down! What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them (within reason, of course; you can’t put them so that they are chemically unstable, for example). [...]

What could we do with layered structures with just the right layers? What would the properties of materials be if we could really arrange the atoms the way we want them? They would be very interesting to investigate theoretically. I can’t see exactly what would happen, but I can hardly doubt that when we have some control of the arrangement of things on a small scale we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have, and of different things that we can do.