A Boy and His Atom, scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) image. This image (showing a scale for a distance of 1 nanometre) is part of the Guinness-certified World's Smallest Stop Motion Film, which was created atom by atom in the scanning tunnelling microscope laboratory at IBM Research - Almaden, California, USA. Almost 10,000 atoms were used to create around 250 images for the film. The images were created using a Nobel Prize-winning scanning tunnelling microscope that is used to study atomic properties for current and future memory and data storage technologies. Image created in April 2013.