Subatomic electronic feature from dynamic motion of Si dimer defects in Bi nanolines on Si(001)

Reduced dimensions can give rise to surprising effects. While a long exposure time photograph of a macroscopic moving object appears blurred, scanning tunneling microscopy images of flipping Si dimer defects embedded in Bi-nanolines on the Si(001) surface appear much sharper than those of static ones. This counter intuitive dynamic sharpening is perfectly modelled by density functional theory.