The transistor itself is composed of a single phosphorous-31 isotope, which has been precisely placed on a base of silicon using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope in an ultra-high vacuum chamber.
Nanometer-size materials occur all around us in nature, but it was only 20 years ago, thanks to IBM's introduction of the scanning tunneling microscope, that scientists began to observe and manipulate materials at the atomic level.
In addition to using the living system as artwork, Brown made a series of images with a scanning electron microscope, and using the techniques to create illuminated manuscripts, he applied gold leaf to the regions of the prints where the bacterial gold deposits were found.