Charging gold with a single electron.By transferring a single electron to a gold atom, scientists have converted a neutral atom into a negatively charged Adj. 1. negatively charged - having a negative charge; "electrons are negative" electronegative, negative charged - of a particle or body or system; having a net amount of positive or negative electric charge; "charged particles"; "a charged battery" ion. The switching of the electronic state of an individual atom is not only a demonstration of the exquisite control over matter that scientists now wield but could also lead to new ways of encoding data for making ultrahigh-density memory chips. Jascha Repp of the IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland and his colleagues allowed gold atoms to adsorb adsorb /ad·sorb/ (ad-sorb´) to attract and retain other material on the surface; to conduct the process of adsorption. ad·sorb v. To take up by adsorption. onto a thin film of sodium chloride sodium chloride, NaCl, common salt. Properties Sodium chloride is readily soluble in water and insoluble or only slightly soluble in most other liquids. It forms small, transparent, colorless to white cubic crystals. atop a copper base. Then, they finessed the stylus-like tip of a scanning tunneling microscope scanning tunneling microscope, device for studying and imaging individual atoms on the surfaces of materials. The instrument was invented in the early 1980s by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, who were awarded the 1986 Nobel prize in physics for their work. to a position directly over one gold atom and applied a positive-voltage pulse. This pulse delivered an electron to the atom, tagging the gold atom with a negative charge. Applying a negative voltage to the tip yanked the electron back, returning the gold atom to its neutral state. Reporting in the July 23 Science, the researchers suggest that such an atomic-switching mechanism could be used to store bits of data--neutral atoms might encode the 1s of digital data, for instance, while charged atoms would encode the 0s.--A.G. |
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