Science nerds and photographers can join hands today and stare in awe at what a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory managed to do. Entirely by accident, these scientists have managed to take the first ever high-res images of carbon atoms in the process of forming chemical bonds.
The team, led by Felix Fischer, were actually trying to create tiny nanostructures made of graphene — basically a one molecule thick layer of the substance graphite that has the potential to revolutionize everything from circuits to touch screens. But creating the right graphene nanostructures is a tough process, so Fischer asked to borrow Berkeley physicist Michael Crommie’s atomic force microscope, which could capture atom-level images of the molecules falling into place.