How Probe Microscopists Became Nanotechnologists
Year: 2004
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Nanoscale entities are by definition invisible to the unmediated senses. Yet generating images of these objects has been crucial to the rhetoric of nanotech boosters. Thus, bringing microscopes and microscopists under the nano umbrella has been central to the work of nano proponents. No instruments have been more crucial to this process than the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and atomic force mi- croscope (AFM). Yet STM and AFM have long histories that precede the advent of nano. I outline this history and show that the connection between probe microscopy and nano is contingent rather than self-evident. The drafting of the probe micros- copy community into nano was inspired by role differentiation within that commu- nity following the widespread commercialization of the instruments in the early 1990s. As probe microscopists move into nano, it is likely they will remake the field in light of the history of their community.
Author: Cyrus C. M. Mody
Institution: Cornell University
Language: English
Subfield: General Materials Science
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2186334711