'We're down to the atom size': Cornell researchers discover how to focus on tiniest of the very small

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June06/Mkhoyan_polarity.lg.html

June 14, 2006

By Lauren Gold
lg34@cornell.edu

If you need a good picture of a molecule, your first job is getting its atoms to pose for you, says John Silcox, Cornell's David E. Burr Professor of Engineering and an expert in the realm of the very tiny.

But atoms are not willing subjects. They jiggle furiously, defying any microscopist who tries to catch them at a standstill. Nor are they polite: The larger atoms in a molecule typically overshadow the smaller ones, making it impossible to view the little ones.

Now, though, researchers at Cornell have developed a technique to get a closer-than-ever look at individual atoms within crystal molecules -- allowing them, for the first time, to see the polarity, or physical alignment, of those constituent atoms and to get a view of the smaller atoms.