One thing I love about my research in nano science is the state of the art instruments I get to use. The last two days I've been getting trained on a brand new ~$4M aberration corrected STEM (scanning transmission electron microscope). This amazing machine is one of only about 20 microscopes in the world that can achieve sub angstrom (less than 1/10 nanometer) resolution which is enough to very clearly see individual atoms (or at least columns of atoms from above). Here are is an image I took of a CdSe nano rod that I made recently. You can actually distinguish the individual cadmium and selenium atoms using the Z-contrast or atomic number contrast. Since the higher Z cadmium atoms scatter electrons more strongly they appear brighter in the image. Sooooooo cool.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Atoms!
One thing I love about my research in nano science is the state of the art instruments I get to use. The last two days I've been getting trained on a brand new ~$4M aberration corrected STEM (scanning transmission electron microscope). This amazing machine is one of only about 20 microscopes in the world that can achieve sub angstrom (less than 1/10 nanometer) resolution which is enough to very clearly see individual atoms (or at least columns of atoms from above). Here are is an image I took of a CdSe nano rod that I made recently. You can actually distinguish the individual cadmium and selenium atoms using the Z-contrast or atomic number contrast. Since the higher Z cadmium atoms scatter electrons more strongly they appear brighter in the image. Sooooooo cool.
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