Heinrich Rohrer

Heinrich Rohrer (born June 6, 1933) is a Swiss physicist who, with Gerd Binnig, received half of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics for their joint invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Ernst Ruska received the other half of the prize.

Related Topics:
June 6 - 1933 - Swiss - Physicist - Gerd Binnig - 1986 - Nobel Prize for Physics - Scanning tunneling microscope - Ernst Ruska

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Rohrer was educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and received his Ph.D. there in 1960. In 1963 he joined the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, where he remained. Binnig also joined the laboratory, and it was there that the two men designed and built the first scanning tunneling microscope.

Related Topics:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich - Ph.D. - 1960 - 1963 - IBM Research Laboratory - Zurich

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This instrument is equipped with a tiny tungsten probe whose tip, only about one or two atoms wide, is brought to within five or ten atoms' distance of the surface of a conducting or semiconducting material. (An atom is equal to about 0.1 nanometre, or one angstrom.) When the electric potential of the tip is made to differ by a few volts from that of the surface, quantum mechanical effects cause a measurable electric current to cross the gap. The strength of this current is extremely sensitive to the distance between the probe and the surface, and as the probe's tip scans the surface, it can be kept a fixed distance away by raising and lowering it so as to hold the current constant. A record of the elevation of the probe is a topographical map of the surface under study, on which the contour intervals are so small that the individual atoms making up the surface are clearly recognizable.

Related Topics:
Tungsten - Nanometre - Angstrom - Quantum mechanical

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