Re: Nano positioning with light beams ?

Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 18:09:43 -0600 (CST)

>
>"Berrie" <staring@worldonline.nl> writes:
>
>> Anyway (this is of course way out off my league) what if you
>> would use something similar for positioning atoms. So by
>> keeping one Atom locked between beams from different (opposite)
>> directions and doing this also with the one you would like to push
>> against it, you could move and work in 3d, instead of flat, like an
STM.

Anders:

>Yes, atoms can be manipulated with laser beams. "Optical crystals" can
>be created where atoms align in the nodes to three intersecting beams,
>and matter can be moved around or cooled with lasers. Using them for
>molecular manipulation is likely hard though, since the wavefronts are
>much larger than the atoms, so that if you push atom A towards atom B,
>both atoms will move.
>

This has been proposed.
Check out "The Optical Assembler" interview with Forrest Bishop at
NanoTechnology Magazine,
http://www.nanozine.com

Forrest Bishop