IBM puts atomic art on display

Two atomic-level images resulting from scientific work at IBM's labs in the early 1990s have been unveiled today at an art exhibition at the US Patent and Trademark Museum.

The Art of Invention exhibit features more than 70 works that have emerged from inventions, patents and trademarks.

They include two images created using IBM's low-temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM), which is used to visualise individual atoms on a metal or semiconductor surface.

IBM scientists built structures out of individual atoms while experimenting with materials that might make up future computer chips and storage components.

The STM was invented by two IBM scientists, netting them a Nobel Prize in 1986. Unlike a traditional microscope, the STM detects the electrical current between the tip of the microscope and the surface of the material being scanned, creating an atomic-level map of the surface.

The first image is called The Quantum Corral and is based on the STM's ability to image the wave patterns of electrons on the surface of a metal.

IBM positioned 48 iron atoms into a circular ring in order to 'corral' some of the surface electrons and force them into quantum states determined by the circular corral walls.

The second image, titled The Search For Quantum Chaos, involved the construction of a stadium-shaped 'quantum corral' in the hope of observing a signature of quantum chaos known as 'scarring'.