Number 269 (Story #3), May 6, 1996 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein HOLOGRAM TEMPLATE FOR ATOMS . Physicists at NEC (Japan) and the University of Tokyo have invented a rudimentary form of lithography using atoms instead of light waves to produce an image. The researchers reconstruct a desired pattern at a detector by using a computer-generated hologram (essentially the Fourier transform of the pattern recorded in a silicon nitride membrane) to manipulate a beam of cold neon atoms. Cold enough to act as waves (with a quantum wavelength of 7.1 nm), the atoms were diffracted at the hologram and deposited onto a fluorescent plate. (J. Fujita et al., Nature, 25 April 1996.)