Scientists at Bell Labs have developed a way to image a single impurity atom in silicon to understand how impurities affect the properties of microchips.
The finding will help in creating new manufacturing technologies for smaller chips. Impurities are introduced into silicon to provide charge carriers that control a chip’s electrical properties.

As components continue to shrink, just a few atoms of impurities could determine the function of a device.

The research is described in an article published April 25, 2002 in the journal Nature.