Tokyo physicists solve a 25-year-old nanotechnology mystery by creating atomically precise 1-nanometre tubes |
For more than 25 years, physicists have predicted that shrinking certain semiconductor nanotubes to extreme dimensions would fundamentally alter their electronic behaviour. The problem was proving it. Structures at this scale are notoriously difficult to manufacture because they become unstable long before reaching the sizes required for experimental validation. Researchers at the University of Tokyo…