Forscher „programmieren“ Materialien um, indem sie ihre Atome schnell neu anordnen – Eine neue Methode zur präzisen Bewegung von Säulen einzelner Atome innerhalb eines Materials könnte zu exotischen Quanteneigenschaften führen.
https://news.mit.edu/2026/researchers-reprogram-materials-quickly-rearranging-their-atoms-0513
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From the article
It’s been 37 years since scientists first demonstrated the ability to move single atoms, suggesting the possibility of designing materials atom by atom to customize their properties. Today there are several techniques that allow researchers to move individual atoms in order to give materials exotic quantum properties and improve our understanding of quantum behavior.
But existing techniques can only move atoms across the surface of materials in two dimensions. Most also require painstakingly slow processes and high-vacuum, ultracold lab conditions.
Now a team of researchers at MIT, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other institutions has created a way to precisely move tens of thousands of individual atoms within a material in minutes at room temperature. The approach uses a set of algorithms to carefully position an electron beam at specific locations of a material, then scan the beam to drive atomic motions.
“The results demonstrate the ability to deterministically move atoms repeatedly within a material’s 3D atomic lattice,” says MIT Research Scientist Julian Klein, who conceived of and directed the project. “We can reprogram materials to create defects at will, realizing entirely artificial states of matter not found in nature with a wide range of potential applications, including sensing, optical, and magnetic technologies. There are so many opportunities enabled by these techniques.”
This is the kind of science that feels like magic until it becomes infrastructure moving atoms like furniture could lead to reprogrammable batteries or room temp conductors way down the line as a founder I think about how to apply this practically not just geek out on the physics but for now I use Runable to turn dense research papers like this into explainer decks for my non technical cofounder so we can at least follow the conversation without a phd the quantum properties are cool but the real win is when someone builds a tool that does this at room temperature not cryo
It would be really cool if we could reprogram more basic matter to have properties of much more exotic and rare matter.
Imagine something made out of carbon or steel, but doing the work and having the qualities of tungsten, or reuthinium four things like catalystss