5 Applications of tunnelling
5.1 Overview
The discovery that quantum mechanics permits the tunnelling of particles was of great significance. It has deep implications for our understanding of the physical world and many practical applications, particularly in electronics and the developing field of nanotechnology. This section introduces some of these implications and applications. Applications naturally involve the three dimensions of the real world, and realistic potential energy functions are never perfectly square. Despite these added complexities, the principles developed in the last section provide a good basis for the discussion that follows.