More than a century after their discovery, X-rays still claim their place in medicine and science.

Prof Ivo Rangelow from the University of Ilmenau is the Scientific Vice Coordinator of the EU research project PRONANO. Researchers of the European project PRONANO have developed a new technology to examine surfaces at the atomic level.

Researchers from the Institute of Micro- and Nanotechnologies in Ilmenau, Germany have developed the new scanning device with a set of highly sensitive needles or cantilevers , each of which is only a few microns wide.

A cantilever is a very thin single needle currently used for quality control at the nanoscale, but to improve and speed up the process scientists are developing an array of needles, a cantilever array, functioning simultaneously.