At the time it was absolutely impossible to see past atoms with sufficient resolution. German physicists Maximilian Haider, Harald Rose and Knut Urban managed to "exponentially increase the resolving power of the electron microscope by developing an electronic optics that has represented a breakthrough offering subatomic precision," explains the jury's ruling. For this reason, they have just won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category in its sixth edition.
His technique is the only one that allows matter to be explored on the scale of the picometer , the equivalent of one hundredth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Or what is the same, the billionth of a meter. Thanks to this, you can see how each atom moves, and how it interacts with the others with a clarity never achieved before.
According to the jury's ruling, this scientific advance " is today key in many areas of applied and fundamental science ." In fact, it is possible to "study the consequences of subtle atomic changes in the properties of materials and the dynamics of interactions at specific atomic positions."
Currently, this microscope is applied to such cutting-edge fields as the study of graphene, chip miniaturization and molecular biology to better understand the processes that occur inside cells.
