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Nanotechnology has created unimaginable impact on the field for the macroscopic world. One of the most striking is the quantum confinement: elementary particles such as electrons, are trapped in closed nano-structures, a phenomenon that generates the art optical and electronic properties with no equivalent in nature and potential technological applications. Until now, scientists had observed confinement isolated objects or irregular systems.

An investigation published in the latest issue of Science and with the participation of researchers of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) Jorge Lobo Checa, has detected for the first time the formation of a regular series of electronic confinement (also called quantum dots ) on a copper surface. The finding could be useful in future applications for sensors and computer.

The study, conducted mostly at the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, has managed to avoid the difficulties encountered in setting up regular structures capable of causing the confinement. According to Czech Wolf, which is part of the Research Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology CIN2 (CSIC joint center and the Fundació Privada Institut Català Nanotechnology), the findings of the study is that regular confinement did not behave as independent systems, but interacting with each other and form a new structure of electronic bands. This finding, he adds, would control different electronic properties of the surface of matter (in the case of this investigation, copper), which would control different electronic properties, such as resistance.