In his now-famous 1959 speech on nanotechnology, Richard Feynman proposed that it should be possible to see the individual atoms in a material, if only the electron microscope could be made 100 times better. With the development of aberration correctors on transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) over the last decade, this dream of microscopists to directly image structures atom-by-atom has come close to an everyday reality. Figure 1 shows such a high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) image of a single-wall carbon nanotube obtained with an aberration-corrected TEM. Now that atomic-resolution images have become possible with aberration-corrector technology in both TEM and STEM, we can ask ourselves if we truly have achieved the goal of seeing individual atoms. Most aberration-corrected images exhibiting atomic resolution are not distinguishing individual atoms, but columns of a small number of atoms, so despite this remarkable achievement, there is still “plenty of room at the bottom” in order to move toward seeing, counting, and quantifying individual atoms. In fact, there never has been a more exciting time for electron microscopists.

Solid materials in subambient gaseous environments have been imaged using in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM), for example to study dynamic effects: carbon nanotube growth, nanoparticle changes during redox reactions, and phase transitions in nanoscale systems. In these studies the vacuum level in the specimen region of the electron microscope was increased to pressures of up to 10 mbar using pump-limiting apertures that separated the specimen region from the rest of the high-vacuum electron column, but it has not been possible to achieve the higher pressures that are desirable for catalysis research. TEM imaging at atmospheric pressure and at elevated temperature was achieved with 0.2-nm resolution by enclosing a gaseous environment several micrometers thick between ultra-thin, electron transparent silicon nitride windows. Although Ångström-level resolution in situ TEM has been demonstrated with aberration-corrected systems, the key difficulty with TEM imaging is its dependence on phase contrast, which requires ultra-thin specimens, limiting the choice of experiments.

Understanding the structure and dynamics of the protein complexes that underlie cellular function is a central scientific challenge. Biochemical techniques used to identify such complexes would be enhanced by the imaging of specific molecular positions in the context of intact cells, with protein-scale resolution (on the order of a few nanometers). Currently, though, nanometer resolution can only be achieved at the cost of less-direct imaging of the unperturbed cell. Cellular ultrastructure is traditionally studied by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which yields nanometer resolution on embedded and stained sections, or cryo sections. These cellular samples are neither intact nor in their native liquid state. Light microscopy is used to image protein distributions in fluorescently labeled cells in liquid to investigate cellular function, but even recent improvements in resolution by nanoscopy techniques are still insufficient to resolve the individual constituents of protein complexes. Thus, development of techniques capable of high-resolution imaging in native cellular states would contribute significantly to our understanding of cellular function at the molecular level. The development of liquid compartments that include electron-transparent silicon nitride membrane windows has led to the introduction of a novel concept to achieve nanometer resolution on tagged proteins in cells.

During the last twenty-five years of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), atomic resolution has become routine in studies of a wide range of materials. While less routine, atomic force microscopy (AFM) also can achieve atomic resolution, even on insulating surfaces. These two microscopy approaches have significantly advanced our understanding of the surface physics and chemistry of many important phenomena. A significant contribution of scanning probe microscopy is that it can characterize local properties as well as structure. Surprising levels of spatial resolution have been achieved in scanning probes that can access continuum properties such as resistance, capacitance, etc..

With the recent advances made in monochromation of electron sources and Cs-correction, the point resolution of the transmission electron microscope (TEM) has been extended into the sub-Angstrom regime. This development has led to an important consequence—that specimen preparation has become a more critical issue for the materials scientist. Nanoscale artifacts that could be tolerated a few years ago when imaging in the 0.1–0.15 nm range can no longer be allowed. An example is hydrocarbon contamination, which although only a few monolayers thick, obscures the area of interest. Other examples include residual deformation and oxidation following traditional mechanical methods. Ion-based methods may induce amorphization and implantation defects, depending on the type of ion, its energy, and the particular protocol that is used.

The surface, or topmost layers of a material, is the region that is in contact with the environment. The composition and chemistry of the surface often can be drastically different from that of the bulk. For many materials systems (catalysts, coatings, biomedical devices, etc.), the surface chemistry and/or properties determine the device performance. Adhesion, delamination, staining, and corrosion are among the important surface phenomena that need to be understood in industrial settings. Over the past forty years, a number of surface analysis techniques have been commercialized to characterize the composition and microstructure of the surface. The most commonly used techniques are summarized in this issue of Microscopy Today.

Light microscopes in laboratories and hospitals are used for examining many different types of samples—from industrial research to life-science research and clinical screening. These procedures use conventional bright-field, differential phase contrast (DIC), and fluorescence microscopy among other techniques. In all cases, the light source on the microscope has a crucial influence on the quality of images viewed and the conclusions reached.

Charged particle microscopes have been used extensively for the creation of nanostructures. As a subset of the techniques for this, the process of beam-induced chemistry offers almost endless flexibility for both additive (by beam-driven precursor deposition) and subtractive (by beam-catalyzed etching) processing. A recent review article makes it evident simply by its massive page count the number of materials that have been used to deposit a variety of conductive, insulating, magnetic, photonic, and other structures. To take advantage of these capabilities, though, the nanoarchitect must select the correct settings for a large number of parameters. One key figure of interest is the size of features that can be written by deposition of conducting material: how small can we go? Process development is complex, however: a standard beam-induced deposition process using the system described below calls for the control of sixteen different parameters! Several of these are used to set the flow of the reactant, several are required for defining the particle beam, and yet another set of parameters call out the routine by which the beam is scanned over the pattern of interest. In the end, the result provides just one recipe for one chemistry with one beam type. The wide scatter of reported outcomes in the review article mentioned above indicates the complexity of the problem, where each result given can be considered just a snapshot of one small corner of the parameter space. Our goal here is to apply a quantitative optimization methodology for the determination of beam chemistry processes in the helium ion microscope (HIM). In this article, we discuss efforts toward finding the minimum obtainable line width and gap width between line pairs of deposited platinum lines and giving a predictive formulation of the same.

When studying highly resolved scanning electron microscope images of cell surfaces, the question arises, whether the observed patterns are real or just artifacts of the cell preparation process. The following steps are usually necessary for preparation: fixation, drying, and metal coating. Each step might introduce different artifacts. Clever techniques have been developed to dry cells as gently as possible, for example critical point drying with different organic solvents and CO2. Instrument manufacturers also have taken account of this issue, for example, through the realization of the environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM), operating with a low-vacuum environment saturated with water so that samples might stay hydrated. Another approach is the extreme high-resolution scanning electron microscope (XHR SEM), where the electron beam is decelerated shortly before reaching the sample. This technique requires no metal coating of the sample. Cryo-SEM also may be used, where no sample preparation is required beyond freezing in a high-pressure freezer or other cryo-fixation device. Then the cell can be examined in the frozen, hydrated state using a cryostage. However, at least some kind of preparation is necessary for SEM imaging, and we wanted to find out what changes the preparation makes on the cell surface.

The push in consumer electronics over past decades has been toward smaller, faster, and cheaper products but with same or improved capabilities. The consumer imaging world has been no exception with the integration, for example, of functional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cameras into ever smaller cellular phones. The CMOS sensors have continued to develop and improve with increasing numbers of smaller, more sensitive pixels with larger photo-response capacity providing higher dynamic range. This technological expansion has inevitably spilled over into even the scientific imaging world, such as in biological light microscopy. This advancement of consumer CMOS digital camera technology invites comparison of CMOS cameras with the current standard charge coupled device (CCD) cameras in scientific imaging.

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) permits measurements on biological samples below the limits of light microscopy resolution under physiological environments and other controlled conditions. Consequently, AFM has become an increasingly valuable technique in cell biology. One of the most exciting advances in AFM instrumentation has been its integration with the light microscope. This permits investigators to take advantage of the power and utility of light microscopy and scanning probe microscopy simultaneously. In combining a light microscope with an AFM, scanner components must be specifically designed so that they do not adversely impact the light microscope's optical imaging capabilities. For example, an AFM-ILM (inverted light microscope) hybrid system should be fully compatible with the highest quality, off-the-shelf 0.50–0.55 NA numerical aperture (NA) OEM objectives and condensers.

Over the past decade, the field of nanotechnology has expanded, and the most heavily used nanoscale characterization/imaging techniques have been scanning probe microscopy (SPM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Although these high-resolution imaging techniques help visualize nanostructures, it is essential to understand the chemical nature of these materials and their growth mechanisms. Surface modifications in the first few nanometers can alter the bulk properties of these nanostructures, and conventional characterization techniques, including energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) associated with SEM and TEM are not suited to detecting these surface modifications except in special, favorable specimens. A modern state-of-the-art scanning Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) instrument provides valuable elemental and chemical characterization of nanostructures with a lateral spatial resolution better than 10 nm and a depth resolution of a few nm. In this article we review the technique of scanning AES and highlight its unique analytical capabilities in the areas of nanotechnology, metallurgy, and semiconductors.

Heating microscopes were commercially introduced 60 years ago, and they immediately gained an important role in material science and engineering thanks to their wide field of application. Nowadays, these instruments are used in both industry and research in many sectors: traditional and advanced ceramic industries, the glass industry, power plants, the metallurgical sector, and, generally, in all fields where the melting behavior of materials has to be determined. Heating microscopy techniques can be successfully applied to the direct characterization of glazes, glasses, frits, ashes, mold powders for continuous casting, coals, slags, etc.—during a heat treatment.

Our common introduction to the laws of chemistry is rooted in the bulk, steady-state phenomena of solution and gas chemistries. This eases the introduction of the mathematical structure required to explain our macroscopic measurements. We come to understand that chemical change is driven by local gradients in the bulk and that gradients are steepest where properties change most rapidly. This is exactly what happens at material interfaces, where the mathematics get complicated, chasing infinities, and approximations often have to suffice. This confirms what we intuitively knew from everyday observation, that chemical dynamics take place at the interfaces between materials. The interfaces are where the action is.

“Second best no more” was the title of an article written by David C. Joy for Nature Materials. The article was for highlighting a breakthrough made by a team formed between Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, USA) and Hitachi High Technologies Corporation (HHT, Japan). Sub-angstrom secondary electron (SE) images were obtained on a Hitachi HD-2700, which is a combined scanning electron microscope (SEM) and scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) operating at a maximum accelerating voltage of 200 kV. For the first time, single atoms and atomic lattices on crystal surfaces are unambiguously presented in SE images.

The discovery by Novoselov and Geim of a simple method to transfer a single atomic layer of carbon from the c-face of graphite to a substrate suitable for measurements of its electrical and optical properties has led to an increased interest in studying and employing two-dimensional model systems. An overview of electron and phonon properties of graphene and their relationship to the one-dimensional form of carbon known as nanotubes can be found in. The unique chemical, mechanical, electrical, and optical properties of graphene lead to its many application possibilities such as: single molecule detectors, high-strength low-weight new materials, design of new semiconductor devices, etc.

The intersection of nanopositioning and light microscopy is expanding and deepening rapidly. Evolving disciplines as diverse as single-molecule biophysics, super-resolution microscopy, and automated microassay scanning share several common themes: higher throughput, reduced resolution tolerances, and dynamic (on-the-fly) techniques. These combine to increase the prevalence of piezo-based positioning systems added to or integrated into microscope setups.