Applications
The TEAM has been tested on various crystalline solids, resolving individual atoms in GaN ( orientation), germanium, gold and others, and reaching the spatial resolution below 0.05 nm (about 0.045 nm). In the images of graphene—a single sheet of graphite—not only the atoms, but also the chemical bonds could be observed. A movie has been recorded inside the microscope showing hopping of individual carbon atoms around a hole punched in a graphene sheet. Similar pictures, resolving carbon atoms and bonds between them, have been independently produced for pentacene—a planar organic molecule consisting of five carbon rings—using a very different microscopy technique, atomic force microscopy (AFM). In AFM, the atoms are probed not by electrons, but by a sharp vibrating tip.
Read more about this topic: Transmission Electron Aberration-Corrected Microscope