You can see some of the other winning images below: Not only do these types of laser-cooled atomic ions allow researchers to study and harness the properties of the quantum world, they can also be used to build atomic clocks and future quantum computers. 'A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed the numbers to be on my side, and when I set off to the lab with camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with this particular picture of a small, pale blue dot.' 'The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the miniscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality,' he explained. Nadlinger took this photo through the window of the vacuum chamber. The whole thing is housed inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber and dramatically cooled to keep the atom still. The energy from the laser causes the atom to emit photons which Nadlinger could capture on camera using a long exposure. The atom is being illuminated by a blue-violet laser. The distance between them is about 2 millimetres (0.08 inch). To give you a little perspective on the size of this set-up, the atom is being held in place by electric fields emanating from those two metal needles on either side of it. The image was captured by physicist David Nadlinger from the University of Oxford, and in February this year it was awarded the overall prize in the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council photo competition. In case you're struggling to get a close-enough view to see what we're talking about, the team over at Gizmodo has done the zoom work for you. The team studied a material that is promising for green hydrogen production but the experimental technology they have developed can be used for many different applications.ĭr Nick Clark said: 'This is a milestone achievement and it is only the beginning - we are already looking to use this technique to support development of materials for sustainable chemical processing, needed to achieve the world's net zero ambitions.Tiny specks of energy just like this one are at the centre of so much of the stuff around us, and the thought that we can see this one makes our hearts hurt. The liquid was found to speed up the motion of the atoms and also change their preferred resting sites with respect to the underlying solid. This novel design allowed them to provide precisely controlled liquid layers, enabling the unprecedented videos to be captured showing the single atoms 'swimming' around surrounded by liquid.īy analysing how the atoms moved in the videos and comparing to theoretical insights provided by colleagues at Cambridge University, the researchers were able to understand the effect of the liquid on atomic behaviour. A 2D layer of molybdenum disulphide was fully suspended in liquid and encapsulated by graphene windows. Professor Roman Gorbachev has pioneered the stacking of 2D materials for electronics but here his group have used those same techniques to develop a 'double graphene liquid cell'.

First author, Dr Nick Clark explained: 'In our work we show that misleading information is provided if the atomic behaviour is studied in vacuum instead of using our liquid cells.' However, the TEM instrument requires a high vacuum environment, and the structure of materials changes in a vacuum. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is one of only few techniques that allows individual atoms to be seen and analysed.

One of the reasons information is missing is the absence of techniques able to yield experimental data for solid-liquid interfaces.' One of the lead researchers, Professor Sarah Haigh, commented: 'Given the widespread industrial and scientific importance of such behaviour it is truly surprising how much we still have to learn about the fundamentals of how atoms behave on surfaces in contact with liquids. Such atomic scale interactions at solid-liquid interfaces govern the behaviour of batteries and fuel cells for clean electricity generation, as well as determining the efficiency of clean water generation and underpinning many biological processes. When a solid surface is in contact with a liquid, both substances change their configuration in response to the proximity of the other. The findings could have widespread impact on the future development of green technologies such as hydrogen production. The team were able to capture images of single atoms 'swimming' in liquid for the first time. Publishing in the journal, Nature, the team led by researchers based at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) used stacks of 2D materials like graphene to trap liquid in order to further understand how the presence of liquid changes the behaviour of the solid.

Atom picture