Microscopes don't exactly lie, but their limitations affect
the truths they can tell. For example, scanning electron microscopes (SEMs)
simply can't see materials that don't conduct electricity very well, and their
high energies can actually damage some types of samples.
In an effort to extract a little more truth from the world
of nanomaterials and nanostructures, researchers at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) have built the first low-energy focused ion
beam (FIB) microscope that uses a lithium ion source.