Electron Microscope Shows Atoms 20 Million Times Their Size

A newly launched electron microscope can show an atom at 20 million times its size, implying that the atom observed would measure approximately 5 mm in diameter.

The new scanning transmission electron microscope, SuperSTEM 2, scans a beam that has been focused down to the size of an atom across a sample providing chemical information on the sample at the same time. Scanning transmission electron microscopy has been used as a technique for some years but detailed imaging of atoms was previously impossible due to defects in lenses. SuperSTEM 2 has an inbuilt computer-controlled system that corrects these defects; the image is sharper and provides elemental and chemical data about atoms and their stability.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; Wiltshire, UK) and led by the University of Liverpool (Liverpool, UK), the SuperSTEM 2 was created by collaboration between the Universities of Liverpool, Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), Leeds (Leeds, UK), and the Daresbury Laboratory (Cheshire, UK). Built on sandstone bedrock, the stable geologic conditions at Daresbury Laboratory, where the SuperSTEM 2 was unveiled, were one of the key reasons for its location. The system is so stable that any sample in the microscope would move no more than 0.5 mm in 100 years or 2000 times slower than continental drift.

Technical director of SuperSTEM 2 at the Daresbury Laboratory, Andrew Bleloch said, "The behavior of atoms can change depending on the size of the particle they are in. SuperSTEM 2 means that researchers can now study how these atoms behave in their ‘native' form and how they might perform as components of different products that come into contact with human beings.”

SuperSTEM also has applications in medicine and is being used to aid in the understanding of diseases such as the inherited disease hemochromatosis, where the liver becomes overloaded with iron. The particles that hold iron within the body are being examined because their structure will shed light on how iron is transported, stored, and released in the body, and the reason they become toxic to the body when there is an iron overload.


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Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
University of Liverpool
University of Glasgow