• Question: What was the biggest combination of atoms you have made in your research in your research?

    Asked by Jakob to Philip on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Philip Moriarty

      Philip Moriarty answered on 16 Mar 2015:


      We’re nowhere near being able to combine atoms in the way we ultimately want to! This video shows just what type of basic, faltering, baby steps we’re taking at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBmBMmuUBMk

      I really hope that in twenty years’ time (or so) that we’ll be at the point where we can build a nanoparticle (a tiny speck of matter) at atom at a time. But that’s a looooong way off. At the moment we – and a number of research groups elsewhere in the world — can move atoms and molecules around on a surface with very high precision, but moving into the third dimension is *really* tricky.

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