MRI used to detect lone electron

July 15, 2004 | Source: NewScientist.com news

Magnetic resonance imaging has been used to pinpoint the position of a single, unpaired electron for the first time.

The achievement, by a team at IBM’s Almaden Research Laboratory in San Jose, California, paves the way for scientists to map the shape of molecules and peer inside transistors to examine atomic-scale features.

“This is an impressive milestone and an essential step towards imaging biomolecules in three dimensions,” says Christopher Hammel, a solid-state physicist at Ohio State University.