Guest_Jim_* Posted May 14, 2015 Posted May 14, 2015 Researchers at MIT have managed to corral electrons in graphene in a new way that allows for tunability and high quality. Corrals have been made before, but these were always static and thus had limited potential. With this new technique though, the researchers were able to create a resonator that could have more applications than can be imagined currently. This new method is surprisingly simple as it just places the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope over the graphene. This causes a circular barrier to form around the tip, which acts as a curved mirror and creates a whispering gallery effect. In optics, whispering gallery resonators have been used for sensing, spectroscopy, and communication, but have the issue of not being tunable. This is however, as the junction between the positive and negative regions the tip produces can be controlled. Also the tip can be moved around the graphene sheet, which opens up other possibilities. Even without that though, such a resonator could be turned into various devices, including electron lenses that could observe systems a thousand times smaller than light is able to, but without the high-energy electron beams of electron microscopy. Using the tip of an electron microscope comes with two benefits for this and future work. One is that the tip can both create the resonator and be used to observe the system. The other is that the tips are a well-established technology already, which should make deploying this technology easier. Source: MIT Back to original news post Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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