High Cycle Fatigue in the Transmission Electron Microscope

Isotope analysis in the transmission electron microscope

The Ångström-sized probe of the scanning transmission electron microscope can visualize and collect spectra from single atoms. This can unambiguously resolve the chemical structure of materials, but not their isotopic composition. Here we differentiate between two isotopes of the same element by quantifying how likely the energetic imaging electrons are to eject atoms. First, we measure the dis...

Electron microscopy’s multi-tool: the Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope

A dedicated Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope is ideally coupled with the energy dispersive x-ray and electron energy loss spectroscopies to obtain information about the chemical composition, morphology and electronic structure on the nanoscale. With several signals being available simultaneously with the pass of a subnanometre-sized beam, this instrument can answer questions from a bro...

The High Voltage Electron Microscope in Biology

The first published micrograph of a biological specimen photographed in a high voltage electron microscope (HVEM) appeared in a paper by Van Dorsten et al. in 1947, and it is consequently surprising that the HVEM does not play a greater role in biology 27 yr later. There are various reasons for this. The first prototypes were developed with the aim of enabling the investigator to examine thicke...

In situ straining experiments in the transmission electron microscope

Three-dimensional orientation mapping in the transmission electron microscope.

Over the past decade, efforts have been made to develop nondestructive techniques for three-dimensional (3D) grain-orientation mapping in crystalline materials. 3D x-ray diffraction microscopy and differential-aperture x-ray microscopy can now be used to generate 3D orientation maps with a spatial resolution of 200 nanometers (nm). We describe here a nondestructive technique that enables 3D ori...