A group of scientists from Ulm University (Germany) in the framework of the project SALVE has recorded video that has been dubbed “the best short film of the year.” For the first time in the history the researchers were able to show how a bond between two atoms, not sketchy, and “live” on real particles. And it was not passive observation, and experiment – the fact of the record and launched the beginning of the reaction.
The main tool was a transmission electron microscope, which operates by analogy with an ordinary camera. Not only passes photons through the photosensitive film, and the electrons through an ultra thin sample materials. The particles are so small that made it possible to achieve unprecedented resolution – the video shows individual atoms of rhenium with a diameter of 0.2 nanometers.
The scientists used single-walled carbon nanotube with a width of about 1 nm as a “test tube” environment for a group of atoms of rhenium. The choice of material is due to the fact that he even refers to heavy metals and has an atomic number of 75, but its stable isotope, and the size of the atoms belong to the “middle”. The passage of the electron beam from the microscope gave them a pulse of energy that caused the formation of the atomic context, the rhenium-rhenium.
In addition to the video recording experiment was pursued and a number of other purposes. For example, scientists have shown that can use the electron beam as a tool for process control. And the shape of the carbon nanotubes affects the behavior of the atoms allows to create conditions for different modes of formation of metallic bonds. Now turn to the experiments with other metals and other scales.
Source — the SALVE Project