Electron Bolts: Even Deeply Bound Electrons Can Escape Molecules via Quantum Tunneling

In quantum mechanics particles can escape from their confines, even if a barrier stands in their way, via a process known as tunneling. Tunneling is no mere quantum curiosity--tunneling electrons, for instance, are harnessed by scanning tunneling microscopes to observe on the smallest scales . Those probes can image a surface at the atomic level by detecting the tunneling of electrons from the surface across a small gap to the microscope's tiny scanning tip. [More] ...

Read the whole article on Scientific American

More from Scientific American