Scientists Develop Ultrafast Microscope That Can See Electrons in Motion
A traditional optical microscope can magnify objects by more than a thousand times, but scientists are often interested in even smaller things.
Electron microscopy can make an object appear one million times larger. But the smallest objects are usually also quite fast, which is why the speed of the microscope is also essential.
Scientists from the University of Arizona have reached a new milestone for microscopic speed, creating a faster scanning electron microscope that can capture an image in just one attosecond—a quintillionth of a second.
Transmission electron microscopes use beams of electrons instead of photons of light to probe a target. They produce a beam of electrons that interact with the sample, which is recorded by lenses and camera sensors to produce an enlarged image that would never be possible with an optical microscope.
Ultrafast electron microscopes have been improving over the past 20 years with the use of pulsed beams of electrons. These contraptions have been able to see several attoseconds at a time, but the team led by University of Arizona professor Mohammed Hassan wanted to go even faster.
Until recently, no one had devised a way to produce such short pulses. The U of A research is based on the work of Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huilliere, who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in physics for their work on ultra-fast radiation pulses.
These experiments kicked off a race to produce faster and faster pulses and better electron microscopes, which enabled Hassan’s team to reach the one-attosecond threshold.
The “attomicroscope” is so fast that it can freeze an electron in time, allowing scientists to observe changes and reactions as they happen, like watching a movie in slow motion.
It does this by producing single-attosecond electron pulses. The system consists of two sections. At the top of the microscope, a laser releases ultra-fast electrons inside the microscope (the pump pulse).
At the bottom, two additional lasers (the optical gating pulse) control the movement of electrons toward the sample. When carefully synchronized with the pump pulse, the gating pulse creates short windows of time for electrons to pass through, generating the vital attosecond pulses.
Then you get a new phone that can capture images much faster, and those same things come into focus. It’s similar when you’re trying to capture the movement of electrons, just at much higher speeds.
“These movements happen in attoseconds. But now, for the first time, we are able to attain attosecond temporal resolution with our electron transmission microscope,” said Hassan. “For the first time, we can see pieces of the electron in motion.” The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.
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JFK
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I love it when it is announced that a great discovery was made that allows us to see amazing things, but nothing to be seen exists in the announcement itself.
Was this thing really developed, or it was developed in someone’s mind?
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Anapat
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So it sees electrons? But it still doesn’t see viruses? Interesting.
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Tom O
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IF it can actually “see” an electron, then the answer to your question would be yes. We have known for a very longtime electrons exist. Viruses? Not so much, especially that very special one. In a nutshell, you can see what exists, but it has to exist for you to see it.
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Peter F Gill
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I feel sure that Heisenberg would have felt uncertain about the significance of this apparent discovery.
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