Microscope Peers Into the Atomic World
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are peering into the atomic world with record clarity, developing an electron microscope image that can distinguish the dumbbell-shaped atom pairs of a silicon crystal.
Stephen Pennycook and colleagues wrote in the journal Science that they had achieved an image resolution at 0.6 angstrom, breaking the previous record of 0.7 angstrom, which the lab set this year. An angstrom, the smallest wavelength of light, is about 500,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair.
