Technique for Studying the Atomic Structure of Material
Surfaces Holds Promise for Catalysis, Corrosion and Other Critical Reactions
(June 17, 2015) For
the first time in the long and vaunted history of scanning electron microscopy,
the unique atomic structure at the surface of a material has been resolved.
This landmark in scientific imaging was made possible by a new analytic
technique developed by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including
scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
“We’ve developed a reasonably direct method for determining
the atomic structure of a surface that also addresses the very challenging
problem of buried interfaces,” says Jim Ciston, a staff scientist with the
National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE
Office of Science User Facility. “Although surface atoms represent a minuscule
fraction of the total number of atoms in a material, these atoms drive a large
portion of the material’s chemical interactions with its environment.”