Erfindergalerie des DPMA: Biografie Binnig

Die Erfindergalerie des Deutschen Patent- und Markenamts

Prof. Dr.

Gerd Karl Binnig

Born: 20 July 1947, Frankfurt/ Main

"As a research scientist you are driven by the desire to find things out with all your might."

Binnig studied physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 1978, he gained his doctoral degree and took up a post at an IBM research laboratory in Rüschlikon/Switzerland, in the same year. Here, he and Heinrich Rohrer succeeded in making an invention which allowed to see individual atoms and molecules: the scanning tunnelling microscope.

The principle of the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM)

The extremely fine sharpened tip of the STM scans the surface to be investigated, line by line. The distance between the tip and the surface determines the amount of the tunnelling current flowing which is measured. By displaying the variation in the tunnelling current it is possible to take an image of the surface down to the atomic resolution. Another feature of the microscope is that it can be used like tweezers, to purposefully move individual atoms.

Nanoscale worlds and Nobel Prize

The invention has opened up a wide range of entirely new research approaches in completely different fields, from molecular biology to semiconductor technology, metallurgy and electrochemistry.
In 1986, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. (They shared the Nobel Prize with Ernst Ruska, the inventor of the first electron microscope.) Since 1987, Binnig is honorary Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
In 1994, he founded his own company, specialised in software for text and image processing.

Patent search

To find out more about Gerd Karl Binnig's patents, go to DEPATISnet

TOP

Patent document DE-3750408T2

"Atomarer Kräftesensor zur Messung der Eigenschaften eines Datenträgers"

(PDF - 500 KB)

"Scanning Force Microscopy"

Dipl.-Phys. Karsten Franke