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(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and FEI Company have adapted a commercial focused ion beam (FIB) column to use photoionized laser-cooled lithium atoms as an ion source, and demonstrated that NIST’s patented Magneto-Optical Trap Ion Source (MOTIS) offers imaging performance competitive with the liquid metal ion sources used in most FIBs.

Using a simple glass capillary, atomic physicists at RIKEN are developing an ultra-narrow ion beam that pinpoints a part of organelles in a living cell, enabling biologists to visualize how the damage affects cell activities.