IBM Research at Almaden participates in a wide variety of activities that fall under the broad scope of nanoscale science and technology. The main focus is to leverage nanostructures to make useful devices/products. While nanotechnology is relevant to many industry segments that include chemical industry, energy industry, medical applications, information technology, etc, IBM's focus is on aspects of nanotechnology that are relevant to storage technology, information processing and other IT related fields. The activities span synthesizing nanoscale materials, nanoscale fabrication for creating nanoscale structures and devices, and developing novel methods to probe and manipulate atoms.

This is an image of vias created by diblock copolymer self-assembly. The dimensions are far smaller than that possible with conventional CMOS industry state-of-the-art lithography tools.