A team of researchers from the University of Arizona have penned a new study detailing the creation of a microscope capable of capturing the speed of a electron.
The new research has been published in the Science Advances journal and details the creation of an attosecond electron microscope, or a microscope that instead of using typical camera sensors that capture visible light use direct beams of electrons that pass through whatever the target object is. Researchers transmit these electrons in pulses and the faster a pulse moves through an object, the greater the resolution. Additionally, camera sensors capture the interaction between the electrons and the target sample.
All of the aforementioned data is used to create the end result images. However, ultrafast electron microscopes work by releasing a train of electrons in at a few attoseconds, which is one quintillionth of a second. It's best to think of each of these electron pulses as frames per second (FPS) in a movie or a video game. Until now, researchers were unable to capture the reaction of the electron when passing through the sample when its between each of the FPS, which restricted the total possible resolution.
However, the team of researchers at the University of Arizona created a single attsecond electron pulse that moves at the same speed as an electron, which essentially syncs the microscope with the speed of an electron, which increases the total resolution of the microscope and parts of the electron that was previously unseen.
"The improvement of the temporal resolution inside of electron microscopes has been long anticipated and the focus of many research groups-because we all want to see the electron motion," Hassan said. "These movements happen in attoseconds. But now, for the first time, we are able to attain attosecond temporal resolution with our electron transmission microscope-and we coined it 'attomicroscopy.' For the first time, we can see pieces of the electron in motion."