To build useful small devices, engineers must be able to see what they are doing, so they use atomic force micro- scopes to take pictures with nanometer resolution. To create images, the microscopes move a sharp tip across the surfaces of such tiny objects as silicon transistors or DNA molecules. The tip, just a few atoms across, moves slowly: at best, commercial atomic force microscopes can take only about one image every ten seconds. So they're not much use in studying fast processes. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to capture nanoscale images a million times faster.
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