Seeing Atoms More Clearly
DOI: 10.1063/1.1397413
In his otherwise excellent review of x-ray holography (Physics Today, April 2001, page 21 )Richard Fitzgerald writes, “Lens aberrations in electron microscopes have prevented … atomic resolution in electron holography.” However, this is no longer true. Alexander Orchowski, Wolf-Dieter Rau, and Hannes Lichte 1 describe experimental off-axis electron holography with atomic resolution. This is the first paper that actually does what Dennis Gabor wanted to do—correct electron-optical aberrations to see atoms. Other groups have also done this since. The resolution of the best electron microscopes is now about one angstrom (better if in-line holography is used), which is sufficient to “see atoms.”
References
1. A. Orchowski, W.-D. Rau, H. Lichte, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74 399 (1995) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.399 .
More about the authors
John Spence, (spence@asu.edu) Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, US .
