A team of researchers including Photon Sciences division head Gabriel Aeppli have demonstrated the first non-destructive imaging of atomically thin nanostructures in silicon. Such structures are the building blocks of quantum devices for physics research and are likely to serve as key components of devices for next-generation classical and quantum information processing. Until now, the characteristics of buried dopant nanostructures could only be inferred from destructive techniques and/or the performance of the final electronic device; this severely limits engineering and manufacture of real-world devices based on atomic-scale lithography. In work recently published in Science Advances, the team use scanning microwave microscopy (SMM) to image and electronically characterize three-dimensional phosphorus nanostructures fabricated via scanning tunneling microscope based lithography.