8 August 2002

Electron microscopy: A new resolution

Recent advances in aberration-corrected electron optics look set
to overcome the obstacles that have prevented the direct imaging of single atoms. Some of the first results from a scanning electron microscope equipped with state-of-the-art computer-controlled aberration correction are presented in this issue. Workers from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and from Nion R&D have constructed an electron probe smaller than 1 Å and they show that this probe can be used dynamically to image individual gold atoms as well as islands of gold atoms on a carbon substrate. The ability to use electron microscopy to identify and locate individual atoms will have a wide impact on materials, physics and biological sciences.

Sub-�ngstrom resolution using aberration corrected electron optics
P. E. BATSON, N. DELLBY & O. L. KRIVANEK
Nature 418, 617–620 (2002); doi:10.1038/nature00972
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