Swiss research institute sets precision world record

The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, northern Switzerland, has set a new world record for X-ray precision. Researchers peered inside a computer chip and obtained an image with a resolution of four nanometres. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox This is a first and a new world record, said the PSI on Friday, which collaborated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), the federal technology institute ETH Zurich and the University of Southern California to achieve this feat. Three-dimensional images of such high resolution enable advances in both information technology and the life sciences. To obtain the image with a resolution of four nanometres (four millionths of a millimetre), the researchers used ptychography. "Ptychography is a computer process that combines many individual images into a single high-resolution image," the PSI explained. + ‘Nanotechnology is the medicine of the future’ By shortening the exposure time and ...