In the garments, body temperature is monitored through a thin-film transistor, while respiration is gauged using electrical resistance, but both technologies employ the pentacene as a sensing layer.

ENGADGET: "Organic semiconductors" help researchers monitor your heart

The technology, based around an "organic semiconductor" called pentacene (a hydrocarbon molecule) and a comparative instrument known as a Wheatstone bridge, can be embedded in fabrics such as undershirts and coupled with wireless transmitters.

ENGADGET: "Organic semiconductors" help researchers monitor your heart

While some improvements have been made since that first image of pentacene, lead author of the Science study, Leo Gross, told BBC News that the new work was mostly down to a choice of subject.

BBC: Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images

The IBM team's innovation to create the first single molecule picture, of a molecule called pentacene, was to use the tip to pick up a single, small molecule made up of a carbon and an oxygen atom.

BBC: Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images