Scanning electron microscopy of wood-derived Silicon Carbide.
(Image Credit: Katya Vishnyakova and Gleb Yushin, Drexel University)

In 1990, at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, in a small lab packed with high-tech equipment in the hills of Silicon Valley, IBM Fellow Don Eigler achieved a landmark in mankind's ability to build small structures. On September 29, 1989 he demonstrated the ability to manipulate individual atoms with atomic-scale precision, and went on to write I-B-M with individual Xenon atoms, an event likened to the Wright brothers'; first flight at Kitty Hawk.
(Image Credit: IBM)

A light-conducting silica nanowire wraps a beam of light around a strand of human hair. The nanowires are flexible and can be as slender as 50 nanometers in width, about one-thousandth the width of a hair.
(Image Credit: Limin Tong/Harvard University)

A tower of multiwalled carbon Nanotubes.
(Image Credit: NASA Ames Center for Nanotechnology)

Scanning electron microscopy of Silicon Carbide ribbons.
(Image Credit: Katya Vishnyakova and Gleb Yushin Drexel University)

IBM scientists are using DNA origami to build tiny circuit boards; in this image, low concentrations of triangular DNA origami are binding to wide lines on a lithographically patterned surface.
(Image Credit: IBM)

Transmission electron microscopy of carbon nanostructures.
(Image Credit: Svetlana Dimovski, Drexel University)

Scanning electron microscopy of Silicon Carbide whiskers.
(Image Credit: Katya Vishnyakova and Gleb Yushin, Drexel University)

Transmission electron microscopy of nanodiamond.
(Image Credit: Gleb Yushin, Drexel University)

Model of folded graphene sheet.
(Image Credit: Slava Rotkin and Yury Gogotsi, Drexel University)

Transmission electron microscopy of etched SiC whiskers.
(Image Credit: Z. Goknur Cambaz and Gleb Yushin, Drexel University)

Model of water inside a carbon nanotube.
(Image Credit: Henry Ye, Drexel University)