A revolutionary electron microscope that has produced the highest-resolution images ever obtained has been developed by researchers using techniques pioneered by scientists at the University of Sheffield (www.sheffield.ac.uk).

Built by researchers at Cornell University in the USA, it could be used to determine the atomic structure of materials that are normally damaged by using existing methods.

The new microscope may eventually allow researchers to study 2-D materials, such as graphene.

It may also lead to a way of imaging individual atoms in 3-D objects without damaging the structure, by using ‘slow’ low-energy electrons.

Electron imaging is usually conducted using costly lenses and high-energy electrons that damage many types of material.

The Cornell research team recorded electrons that had been scattered through high angles to get around this problem.

Once scattered, the electrons do not look anything like an image, so the Cornell research team used computational algorithms developed by scientists at the University of Sheffield to work out what the specimen looked like.

For many years, this backwards calculation — known as the phase problem — was regarded as impossible to solve for a large image.

John Rodenburg at the University of Sheffield, who developed the algorithms with his colleague Andrew Maiden, said: “The electron microscope developed by the Cornell research team is capable of capturing images that have an unprecedented level of detail, paving the way for us to develop new insights into material structure at the atomic scale.”