The revolutionary tech discoveries of the next few decades, the ones that will change daily life, may come from new materials so small they make nanomaterials look like lumpy behemoths.
The revolutionary tech discoveries of the next few decades, the ones that will change daily life, may come from new materials so small they make nanomaterials look like lumpy behemoths.
These new materials will be designed and refined at the picometer scale, which is a thousand times smaller than a nanometer and a million times smaller than a micrometer (which itself is smaller than the width of a human hair). In order to do this work, scientists will need training in an array of new equipment that can measure and guide such exquisitely controlled materials. The work involves designing the materials theoretically, fabricating them, and characterizing their properties.
At Yale University, they have a name for it; they call it “picoscience.”
“Researchers at Yale are inventing new materials that are small, fast, and can perform in a multitude of ways, such as mimicking neurons in the brain, computing with magnets, and calculating with quantum mechanics,” said Frederick Walker, a senior research scientist in the lab of Charles Ahn, the John C. Malone Professor of Applied Physics, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and Physics, and chair of the Department of Applied Physics.
Read more at Yale University
Image: This is an element-specific, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) image of the atoms in a new material developed by Yale in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory. The image shows layered sheets of cobalt (green) and titanium (red) atoms. (Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory)
