What do you need to build a demo of Tier 2? I am guessing if you can do that then you can get an investor.

Tier 2 requires near-field infrared optics at sub-10 nm resolution — that's active research in several groups but not commercially available yet. The immediate next step is Tier 1: one C-AFM image proving the read, one voltage pulse proving the write. That's $300 in materials and access to an AFM. Already in progress with a collaborator.

at that level (Tier 2) we're basically talking plasmonics, right? optics + antenna theory for the uninitiated. SPR, quantum plasmonics, active nanophotonics.. that's some advance shit from the (hopefully near) future, man. This is mostly in semiconductor research now, right? maybe biology?

If you could do that at a high writing rate, could it be used for making ICs?

If you could do that at all, let alone high throughput, you could write the future itself.

Using a mid-IR array with sub 10nm resolution is anything but an engineering path. Tech like that has never left the lab afaik.

Fair point. That's why the paper labels it Tier 2 (near-term research) rather than Tier 1 (existing instrumentation). Tier 1 — scanning probe read/write on a single sample — is the immediate validation target and requires no new technology.