Improving the electron microscope by removing the lens
Baku, March 29 (AZERTAC). Researchers at the University of Sheffield have revolutionized the electron microscope by developing a new method which could create the highest resolution images ever seen. For over 70 years, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which `looks through´ an object to see atomic features within it, has been constrained by the relatively poor lenses which are used to form the image. The new method, called electron ptychography, dispenses with the lens and instead forms the image by reconstructing the scattered electron-waves after they have passed through the sample using computers.
Scientists involved in the scheme consider their findings to be a `first step´ in a `completely new epoch of electron imaging´. The process has no fundamental experimental boundaries and it is thought it will transform sub-atomic scale transmission imaging.
Project leader Professor John Rodenburg, of the University of Sheffield´s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: “To understand how material behaves, we need to know exactly where the atoms are. This approach will enable us to look at how atoms sit next to one another in a solid object as if we´re holding them in our hands. “We´ve shown we can improve upon the resolution limit of an electron lens by a factor of five. An extension of the same method should reach the highest resolution transmission image ever obtained; about one tenth of an atomic diameter. No longer does TEM have to be bound by the paradigm of the lens, its Achilles´ heel since its invention in 1933.”
The new method also disposes of the need to put a lens very close to a living sample, meaning that cells can be seen through thick containers like petri dishes or flasks. This means that as they develop and grow over days or weeks, they do not have to be disturbed.
Plans are even being put into place with the European Space Agency to take the new, more robust, microscope technology to the moon in 2018 to examine the structure of moon soil.
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