Atomic Blasting Creates New Devices to Measure Nanoparticles

Like sandblasting at the nanometer scale, focused beams of ions ablate hard materials to form intricate three-dimensional patterns. The beams can create tiny features in the lateral dimensions — length and width, but to create the next generation of nanometer-scale devices, the energetic ions must precisely control the features in the vertical dimension — depth. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated that a standard ion-beam technique can be fine-tuned to make structures with depths controlled to within the diameter of a single silicon atom.