The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was invented in 1981 by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at the International Business Machines (IBM) Research Laboratory in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. Both Binnig and Rohrer had been engaged in research on superconductivity. Starting from this common interest, they began to study and explore the surfaces of materials.

At first, they used spectroscopy, which measures the interaction of radiant energy with matter. This technique proved inadequate for revealing the complex characteristics of a surface. While doing research on superconductivity as a graduate student, Binnig had examined tunneling, a phenomenon of quantum mechanics. Tunneling occurs when electrons, because of their wavelike makeup, escape from the surface of a solid and create an electron cloud around the solid. Binnig and Rohrer knew that electrons are capable of tunneling through clouds, which touch and overlap between surfaces. (Ivar Giaever had proven this in 1960.)

Binnig and Rohrer proceeded to cause electrons from a solid surface to tunnel through a vacuum to a sharp probe resembling a needle. In their experiment, they brought the tip of the probe to within one-billionth of a meter (one nanometer) of the solid surface, causing the electron clouds of the probe and the surface to touch and a tunneling current to begin to flow. In order to create a three-dimensional map of the surface, atom by atom, it was essential that the probe follow the tunneling current at a constant height above the atoms of the surface. To maintain this height, the probe had to be isolated from vibration and noise, both of which caused serious problems. To solve these issues, Binnig and Rohrer devised a number of technical innovations, including a probe tip that was one atom wide.

As Binnig and Rohrer used the scanning tunneling microscope to explore many different surface structures, including that of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and to observe the interaction of chemicals, the value and importance of the microscope became more and more apparent. Using the STM, Binnig himself actually saw a virus escape from a cell; it was the first time anyone had witnessed this happen. The STM was the first microscope capable of imaging individual atoms. In 1990, a team of researchers at the IBM research laboratory succeeded in moving and rearranging individual atoms. The scanning tunneling microscope is readily applicable in a number of fields. The work of chemists, physicists, bioengineers, and medical researchers has been enormously enhanced by the STM.

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