Physicists build stable diffraction structure in atomically thin graphene
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - 07:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Quantum physics tell us that even massive particles can behave like waves, as if they could be in several places at once. This phenomenon is typically proven in the diffraction of a matter wave at a grating. In a European collaboration, researchers carried this idea to the extreme and observed the delocalization of molecules at the thinnest possible grating, a mask milled into a single layer of atoms. The presented experiments explore the technical limits of matter wave technologies and respond to a famous Gedanken experiment by Einstein and Bohr of almost 80 years ago. The results are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.