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.
My second paper just got published in JACS, here are some images from the paper. If you don't have a subscription to JACS and would like a copy just shoot me an email. The supporting information is available to all for free and contains a lot of info. I'm pretty proud of this work, feel free to ask questions. Enjoy!
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.
