I'm sorry, I'm having image upload problems. But this link is totally worth gaping at.
A team at IBM have used an AFM, a carbon monoxide molecule as a "tuning fork", to record the image of a Pentacene molecule, commonly used in solar cells. It's a very regular molecule, with 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms in a neat array. My little heart totally geeked out looking at the two pictures, the one of the actual, real tiny single little molecule, compared with the graphical mock-up of the atomic array.
This is the first time Atomic Force Microscopy has been used to image a single molecule. It is already done routinely using scanning tunneling microscopy which uses the variation in quantum tunneling current between a probe and the surface as it is rastered across.
AFM tips are all kinds of exciting to scientists, compared to scanning Tunneling microscopy, because the AFM can physically move a single molecule around on a surface, hopefully with precision. New technologies are opening up!
Edited, Aug 31st 2009 11:30am by Aripyanfar