[LINK] First X-ray of a single atom

[Stephen Loosley]

Scientists report world’s first X-ray of a single atom in Nature

https://news.ohio.edu/news/2023/05/scientists-report-worlds-first-x-ray-single-atom-nature

A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and others, led by Ohio University Professor of Physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, Saw Wai Hla, have taken the world’s first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom.

This groundbreaking achievement was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences and could revolutionize the way scientists detect materials.


Since its discovery by Roentgen in 1895, X-rays have been used everywhere, from medical examinations to security screenings in airports. Even Curiosity, NASA’s Mars rover, is equipped with an X-ray device to examine the materials composition of the rocks in Mars.

An important usage of X-rays in science is to identify the type of materials in a sample.

Over the years, the quantity of materials in a sample required for X-ray detection has been greatly reduced thanks to the development of synchrotron X-rays sources and new instruments.

To date, the smallest amount one can X-ray is an attogram, that is about 10,000 atoms or more. This is due to the X-ray signal produced by an atom being extremely weak so that the conventional X-ray detectors cannot be used to detect it.

According to Hla, it is a long-standing dream of scientists to X-ray just one atom, which is now being realized by the research team led by him ..

“Atoms can be routinely imaged with scanning probe microscopes, but without X-rays one cannot tell what they are made of.”

“We can now detect exactly the type of a particular atom, one atom-at-a-time,  and can simultaneously measure its chemical state,” explained Hla, the director of the Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute at Ohio University.

“Once we are able to do that, we can trace the materials down to the ultimate limit of just one atom.”

“This will have a great impact on environmental and medical sciences and a huge impact for humankind. This discovery will transform the world.”

Their paper, published in the scientific journal Nature (DOI 10.1038/s41586-023-06011-w) on May 31, 2023, and gracing the cover of the print version of the scientific journal on June 1, 2023, details how Hla and several other physicists and chemists, including Ph.D. students at OHIO, used a purpose-built synchrotron X-ray instrument at the XTIP beamline of Advanced Photon Source and the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory.