The previous scene showed a simulated image corresponding to our scan across a small area of our virtual sample. Here we fade to a true image of GeSi islands on one of our grown samples. The individual islands were perhaps a few hundred atoms on a side and only a few atoms tall. This is actually still quite big for an SPM. By decreasing the scanned area, SPM's can actually detect the bumps caused by individual atoms. (We call this our "nano-twinkie" GeSi island sample.)

To see an explanation of how piezoelectric crystals work CLICK HERE