Seeing with electrons

Commercially available lens correctors are extending the reach of electron microscopes to unprecedented atomic scales, as Peter Nellist describes. The electron microscope was invented in 1933 and is based on the principle that electrons have a wavelength that is inversely proportional to their momentum. There are two basic types: transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes, plus a hybrid of the two. The lenses in an electron microscope are provided by electromagnetic fields, but they suffer from spherical aberration. The addition of octupole and quadrupole corrector fields has improved the resolution of the electron microscope to better than 0.1 nm in the last decade. The next step is to correct for chromatic aberration, after which the resolution of the microscope will probably be limited by the size of the atom itself. (U.K.)