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I "saw" atoms today!

I

Iasius

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As part of a course in solid state physics this semester we analyzed a InGaN semiconductor today ... with a transmission electron microscope that achieves resolutions of better than than 0.1 nm! :eek:

This is an example of the kind of resolution achievable (you're looking at an image of gold atoms which are spaced roughly 0.2 nm apart):

FEI-Titan-Gold-med.jpg


We were looking at things with a magnification of 1.4 million x. :cool: It's amazing being able to actually "see" atoms. Also quite impressive to work with a microscope that cost nearly $4 million. I want one! ;)

Anyone else used and been awed by similarly cutting edge technology recently?


Poor theoretical physicists. They only have a pen and some paper.
 
Hey, I take offense to that theoretical physicist remark... but your awesome image and claim over power any retaliatory response. :D

On a side note, that image makes me want to wet myself as much as the new image of the Enterprise. :drool:
 
I do like theoretical physics, so please take that in the spirit it was meant to be, even if it was not expressed as such; in some earlier versions of my initial post there were a few smilies there. Ie theoretical physicists have to make do with a pen and paper (or supercomputers as it were), but what they achieve with that is extraordinary.
In other words, I was kidding. I'm still undecided as whether I should pursue more theoretical or experimental courses in the future. Presently, I do plan on taking a course in theoretical solid state physics next year.

Basically, I'm someone that at times likes to actually see things with my own eyes. As a point of comparison, I do like good hard science fiction books, but sometimes I am quite impressed by the visuals of a modern day 2001 - A Space Odyssey.
You might say that I'm more of a theoretical physicist by heart that is impressed right now with that which experimental physicists are able to do with their expensive equipment. Or maybe I'm an experimental physicist that is fascinated by the underlying principles researched by theoretical physicists. I'm actually not sure which direction I should pursue in the future. As I said, I'm not certain of the what branch I should pursue, I solved that by taking more courses than required, ie taking both a course in both quantum many-body theory and experimental methods of solid state physics. :)
 
A fair few years ago during my last few years at school we had an opportunity to visit the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge and we saw an image on a/the electron microscope there which looked very much like the one above. It awed me then and it awes me now.

An interesting aside, they said that it is so sensitive cars passing on the nearby road affect the quality of the image. :vulcan:
 
LtSmash said:
An interesting aside, they said that it is so sensitive cars passing on the nearby road affect the quality of the image. :vulcan:
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With this equipment, talking while we recorded an image influenced the result! It was clearly visible by making the image blurry.
 
Iasius said:
You might say that I'm more of a theoretical physicist by heart that is impressed right now with that which experimental physicists are able to do with their expensive equipment. Or maybe I'm an experimental physicist that is fascinated by the underlying principles researched by theoretical physicists. I'm actually not sure which direction I should pursue in the future. As I said, I'm not certain of the what branch I should pursue, I solved that by taking more courses than required, ie taking both a course in both quantum many-body theory and experimental methods of solid state physics. :)
Click to expand...

What school are you at?

You should get involved in research. You'd be surprised at how much you might like (or dislike) experimental work, which is something that I really don't think you can determine before actually doing it.
 
Haytil said:
What school are you at?

You should get involved in research. You'd be surprised at how much you might like (or dislike) experimental work, which is something that I really don't think you can determine before actually doing it.
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University of Bremen

I have to decide what topic my bachelor thesis is going to be about within the next week or two. I'm currently leaning towards experimental physics (epitaxy, to be more specific). I'll be done with my bachelor's thesis by late summer. I'm not entirely certain what I want to pursue after that for my master thesis, but I'm not ruling out switching to theoretical physics for that one.
Hopefully I'll find out during the next few months while working on my bachelor's thesis. Right now, I like both.
 
Very cool; thanks for sharing!

What is that in the lower left of the image? It's obviously not at the same scale because it has discernible features smaller than the atoms.
 
StarryEyed said:
Very cool; thanks for sharing!

What is that in the lower left of the image? It's obviously not at the same scale because it has discernible features smaller than the atoms.
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Unfortunately I don't have any images we took available at home yet, so I had to make do with a promotional picture by the manufacturer. However I'd suppose that it's probably introduced during the preparation of the sample (via focused ion beam presumably). Ie an amorphous structure that will not give you an clear picture of its structure. It doesn't have structures smaller than the rest of the sample, it's just that it has no structure at all.
It looks like that part of the images we recorded today that were of the "glue" used in the process of preparing for sample for TEM (transmission electron microscopy).
If you're not familiar with these terms I'd be happy to go into details, but I don't know the extent of your knowledge on this ...
 
That's pretty damn cool.

Reminds me of the experiments we did in uni (many moons ago) where we isolated DNA and wound it up on a glass rod. The fact that you could actually see that narrow thread of DNA hanging off the glass always amazed me.
 
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