Using advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) methods, physicists at the University of Nottingham have successfully trapped atoms of krypton inside a carbon nanotube to form a one-dimensional gas.
The behavior of atoms has been studied by scientists ever since it was hypothesized that they are the basic units of the Universe.
The movement of atoms has significant impact on fundamental phenomena such as temperature, pressure, fluid flow and chemical reactions.
Traditional spectroscopy methods can analyze the movement of large groups of atoms and then use averaged data to explain phenomena at the atomic scale.
However, these methods don’t show what individual atoms are doing at a specific point in time.
The challenge physicists face when imaging atoms is that they are very small, ranging from 0.1-0.4 nm, and they can move at very high speeds of around 400 m/s in the gas phase, on the scale of the speed of sound.
This makes the direct imaging of atoms in action very difficult, and the creation of continuous visual representations of atoms in real-time remains one of the most significant scientific challenges.
“Carbon nanotubes enable us to entrap atoms and accurately position and study them at the single-atom level in real-time,” said University of Nottingham’s Professor Andrei Khlobystov.
“For instance, we successfully trapped noble gas krypton (Kr) atoms in our study.”
“Because krypton has a high atomic number, it is easier to observe in a TEM than lighter elements. This allowed us to track the positions of krypton atoms as moving dots.”
“We used our state-of-the-art SALVE TEM, which corrects chromatic and spherical aberrations, to observe the process of krypton atoms joining together to form krypton pairs,” said University of Ulm’s Professor Ute Kaiser.
“These pairs are held together by the van der Waals interaction, which is a mysterious force governing the world of molecules and atoms.”
“This is an exciting innovation,…
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