<p>IBM has developed a microscopy technique that lets it see the bonds between molecules. While that's pretty esoteric for most of us, the tool could help develop graphene-based semiconductors that would result in better batteries, faster chips, nicer displays and more efficient solar panels.</p><p>IBM has developed an imaging technique that is capable of seeing the molecular bonds between atoms. This is a big deal not in some metaphysical way like finding the Higgs Boson particle was a big deal, but in a practical way because it could enable the creation of next generation semiconductors. And those next generation semiconductors are important because without them our progress on building cheaper and faster devices or better cellular networks will grind to a halt.</p><p>The chip world is close to hitting a wall because cramming billions of transistors on something that's smaller than your fingernail is really hard. But it can and is done by the chip industry every single day. What's harder though is breaking the laws of physics in order to keep piling those transistors onto ever smaller chips, but if we want our devices to get smarter, faster and cheaper that may be what we have to do.</p><p>For example, Intel is currently making its fastest chips with line widths of 22 nanometers but has plans to get down to five nanometers (the smaller those line widths, the more transistors you can put on the chip). To get to the 22 nanometer point required Intel researchers to re-invent the transistor, which took Intel scientists a decade. Like, I said. This is hard.</p><p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2012/09/13/ibms-new-imaging-technique-could-lead-to-new-and-better-chips/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/newsid=26709.php">IBM scientists first to distinguish individual molecular bonds</a> (Nanowerk LLC)</p><p><a href="http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2012/09/bond-order-ibm-afm-microscopy-buckyball">Bright idea to probe bond order</a> (Chemistry World)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&ncl=d0FamF8rzx9R75Ms0h1SjwdnEFm3M">5 additional articles.</a></p>