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Nature Physics 4, 443–444 (1 June 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphys991

Surface physics: Electron wrangling in quantum corrals

Eric J. Heller

The ability to image electron waves propagating along a metal surface was discovered by accident in the early 1990s by Don Eigler, Christopher Lutz and Michael Crommie at IBM Almaden. While trying to resolve atomic-scale features on a copper substrate with a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM), they noticed unexpectedly long, periodic undulations in the STM conductance signal as a function of tip position.