Microscopy articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Plasmonic hotspots — nanometre-sized crevices that permit the detection of single molecules — are too small to be imaged with conventional microscopes. They can now be probed using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. See Letter p.385

    • Martin Moskovits

  • Letter |

    Many biomineralized tissues (such as teeth and bone) are hybrid inorganic–organic materials whose properties are determined by their convoluted internal structures. Now, using a chiton tooth as an example, this study shows how the internal structural and chemical complexity of such biomaterials and their synthetic analogues can be elucidated using pulsed-laser atom-probe tomography.

    • Lyle M. Gordon
    •  & Derk Joester

  • Letter |

    Hexagons can easily tile a flat surface, but not a curved one. Defects with topological charge (such as heptagons and pentagons) make it easier to tile curved surfaces, such as soccer balls. Here, a new type of defect is reported that accommodates curvature in the same way as fabric pleats. The appearance of such defects on the negatively curved surfaces of stretched colloidal crystals are observed. The results will facilitate the exploration of general theories of defects in curved spaces, the engineering of curved structures and novel methods for soft lithography and directed self-assembly.

    • William T. M. Irvine
    • , Vincenzo Vitelli
    •  & Paul M. Chaikin

  • News & Views |

    Extensive mapping of local electronic structure in copper oxide superconductors reveals fluctuating stripe-like electron patterns that appear as a high-temperature precursor to superconductivity. See Letter p.677

    • Kathryn A. Moler

  • Letter |

    A long-standing question has been the interplay between pseudogap, which is generic to all hole doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram. This study reports observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state at T* in the high temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x using scanning tunnelling microscopy. The onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes. The experiments indicate that stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause.

    • Colin V. Parker
    • , Pegor Aynajian
    •  & Ali Yazdani

  • Letter |

    An imaging technique that could identify all the individual atoms, including defects, in a material would be a useful tool. Here an electron-microscopy approach to the problem, based on annular dark-field imaging, is described. A monolayer of boron nitride was studied, and three types of atomic substitution were identified. Careful analysis of the data enabled the construction of a detailed map of the atomic structure.

    • Ondrej L. Krivanek
    • , Matthew F. Chisholm
    •  & Stephen J. Pennycook

  • News |

    Atomically thin carbon sheets offer bacteria a protective shell in electron microscopes.

    • Geoff Brumfiel

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