JEOL : "Nature Communications" publishes a paper written by JEOL staff members

The July 15, 2014 issue of "Nature Communications" featured a paper written by JEOL's staff members including Shin-ichi Kitamura (Advanced & Fundamental Technology Center) and Hiroshi Onodera (SA Business Unit). "Nature Communications" is a journal affiliated with the Nature magazine, a world-renowned science journal. "Nature Communications" is one of the most prestigious scientific journals dedicated to publishing high-quality research papers.

Atom manipulation on an insulating surface at room temperature

Shigeki Kawai, Adam S. Foster, Filippo Federici Canova, Hiroshi Onodera, Shin-ichi Kitamura & Ernst Meyer

Up to now, there are many reports about the atomic manipulation for the conductive surface mainly using low-temperature STM (scanning tunneling microscope), but atomic manipulation on the surface of the insulator at room temperature, has yet been under research.

In this paper, Dr. Shigeki Kawai, belonging to the group of Professor Ernst Meyer at University of Basel (Switzerland), has reported that, by using a dynamic mode AFM (atomic force microscope) that can simultaneously detect atomic force in the vertical and lateral directions, the world-first atomic manipulation on the surface of an insulator of sodium chloride (rock salt) has been successfully achieved.
In this atomic manipulation, chlorine atoms in sodium chloride were exchanged with bromine atoms of trace amounts of impurities contained in rock salt one by one while the substitutional bromine atoms were moved. This process enabled the arrangement of complex patterns of a "Swiss cross" structure composed of 20 bromine atoms.

In the present study, knowing what atom was manipulated was also an important academic issue. Using a JEOL Fluorescence X-ray Spectrometer JSX-3100RII, comparison analysis of impurities was applied to the rock salt used for the manipulation and the standard rock salt. It was revealed that, the manipulated sample has bromine concentration of about 5 times that of the standard sample. This is explained by the fact that, the defects which are not observed very much on the surface of the standard rock salt (appearing to be protrusive in the atomic image) are confirmed to appear on the manipulated sample with relatively large volumes.