Creating atomic-scale defects in graphene is very effective in order to achieve certain attributes (recent research for example shown that defects in graphene can make it stronger, more suitable as battery anode material and even help it transfer data). Now researchers from Oxford University published a new high-precision approach to engineer graphene's atomic structure.
The new method replaces the "shotgun" approach usually used with a minutely-controlled beam of electrons fired from an electron microscope. This method is much more precise (four orders of magnitude better, in fact), and they call a "sniper" method.
The current method is difficult to scale into a manufacturing process as electron microscopes are the only systems that can achieve the necessary control of an electron beam. But this may change in the future...
