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Usually they randomly shoot atoms at the substrate and then just search for a spot (among thousands) where it randomly has the configuration they want. Still pretty amazing.

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Can they do that here, they've got quite a few sets of 4/5 atoms which they've interconnected, so that's a lot to get by shotgunning it. I'd assumed they were using something like a STM to nudge the atoms around.

The “precision manufacturing” reference in the paper is to this 2012 paper about an STM placement technique. [0]

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2012.21

hmm. i remember my electron microscopes prof being very excited about his ability to manipulate single atoms exactly where he wants them ~10years ago.

id have assumed the holography has gotten more common and able to operate on bigger volumes

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