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New Electron Microscope Shows Atoms in Color

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the say-cheese dept.

Cornell's Duffield Hall has acquired a new electron microscope that is enabling scientists to see individual atoms in color for the very first time. While old electron microscopes can be compared to black and white cameras, this new scanning transmission electron microscope uses a new aberration-correction technology that is both more intense and allows for faster imaging speed. "The method also can show how atoms are bonded to one another in a crystal, because the bonding creates small shifts in the energy signatures. In earlier STEMs, many electrons from the beam, including those with changed energies, were scattered at wide angles by simple collisions with atoms. The new STEM includes magnetic lenses that collect emerging electrons over a wider angle. Previously, Silcox said, about 8 percent of the emerging electrons were collected, but the new detector collects about 80 percent, allowing more accurate readings of the small changes in energy levels that reveal bonding between atoms."

110 comments

  1. Not color, false color. by oskay · · Score: 4, Informative

    These atoms are color coded, not *seen* in color by the microscope.

    1. Re:Not color, false color. by sakdoctor · · Score: 0, Redundant

      I'm not sure what the actual innovation is here. False colour, or colour coding atoms and other features is as old as electron microscopy itself.

      The concept of colour doesn't really make sense at atomic scales anyway.

    2. Re:Not color, false color. by Spudtrooper · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ted Turner, eat your heart out.

    3. Re:Not color, false color. by kebes · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm not sure what the actual innovation is here. Using false-color in an image is certainly not the innovation. What is innovative is their use of corrective optics to achieve much higher signal (100-fold increase compared to conventional techniques), and the integration of energy-loss spectroscopy. This means that for each pixel in the image, they can determine what kind of atom is being measured. So they can generate false-color maps of atomic identity. Most electron microscopes simply measure electron density: you can guess which element is which based on density, but there can be ambiguities. Some microscopes include detectors for determining what elements are present, but not with high spatial resolution. This new refinement allows precise maps where individual atoms can be both localized, and elementally identified.

      The image they show is impressive when you consider that each blob of color is actually an individual atom, and that they've identified exactly what kind of atom is at each position. In this case they were using it to analyze interdiffusion of atoms at an interface. As nanotechnology becomes more and more 'real' you can imagine how useful it will be to image nano-objects with atomic resolution and elemental discrimination.
    4. Re:Not color, false color. by ChrisMounce · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing the major innovation is the new imaging technique (is it the "new aberration-correction technology"?) that allows them to gather enough information to false color things in the manner they did.

      I suppose you could redefine "color" (what wavelengths will this atom emit), but it's still not going to be the color we know from the macro world.

    5. Re:Not color, false color. by sveard · · Score: 1

      (what wavelengths will this atom emit) Shouldn't that be "reflect"?
    6. Re:Not color, false color. by shawn(at)fsu · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily, one way that atoms can emit light is if you bump its electrons in to a higher orbit with energy, when they return to their natural state the will emit energy sometimes in the form of visible light. This is how things that glow when exposed to ultraviolet light work. At least if I remeber my high school chemistry correctly.

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    7. Re:Not color, false color. by anastasd · · Score: 1

      This means that for each pixel in the image, they can determine what kind of atom is being measured. So they can generate false-color maps of atomic identity. That's interesting. I guess this microscope will have lots of applications. At first thought - in semiconductors production, carbon allotropes and God knows where else.
    8. Re:Not color, false color. by koolguy442 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not to get too technical here, but each blob is actually a column of atoms, as the specimen is wedge-shaped and certainly more than one atomic layer thick.

      Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) has been combined with STEM imaging for several years at least, allowing similar sorts of images to be synthesized. The major contribution of this work is that they've modified the optics so that, even at 0.5 angstrom beam widths (and hence pixel sizes), they still get enough signal to the EELS detector to allow for EELS mapping and spectra acquisition for each of those pixels, giving direct bonding information about the particular portions of atoms probed by the beam. That means that the researchers can tell the difference between titanium atomic columns at different locations within the crystal, depending on the other atoms surrounding them.

      Well, I suppose I did end up getting too technical.

      IAATEL (I am a transmission electron microscopist)

    9. Re:Not color, false color. by JeanPaulBob · · Score: 1

      Using false-color in an image is certainly not the innovation. What is innovative is their use of corrective optics to achieve much higher signal (100-fold increase compared to conventional techniques), and the integration of energy-loss spectroscopy. This means that for each pixel in the image, they can determine what kind of atom is being measured.
      Almost. Energy-loss spectroscopy in SEMs isn't new. (And I don't think it's new in STEMs, either, AFAIK.) The innovation is in the corrective optics, as you said. It gives them much higher signal.

      It has two results. (1) Very fine, single-atom resolution. (2) Faster imaging.

      The last SEM I used with energy-loss spectroscopy was slow, because the signal-to-noise wasn't great. You had to wait a long time to get the spectroscopy data. If this instrument is faster, that's truly awesome.
    10. Re:Not color, false color. by sentientbeing · · Score: 1

      I always think of neutrons as black, protons as white and electrons as yellow.

      I must have saw them coloured like that in a book early in my studies, and now I cant think of them any other way.

      --

      ------
      beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
    11. Re:Not color, false color. by kestasjk · · Score: 1

      This means that for each pixel in the image, they can determine what kind of atom is being measured. So they can generate false-color maps of atomic identity. That's interesting. I guess this microscope will have lots of applications. At first thought - in semiconductors production, carbon allotropes and God knows where else. Just look at the images in the article; you can clearly distinguish lanthanum from titanium, manganese, and manganese-lanthanum. From that list alone the mind boggles with potential applications.
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    12. Re:Not color, false color. by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      Its significantly better false colour. :)

    13. Re:Not color, false color. by SamuelComeau · · Score: 1

      "how atoms are bonded to one another in a crystal, because the bonding creates small shifts in the energy signatures " I may be a humble college chemisty student, but I can see you are all taking this way too literally. Obviously it isn't a visible color (Wavelength of about 3.9e-7m to about 7e-7m) but the point is that the spectrum goes anywhere from long radio waves (several meters) to gamma rays and shorter (1e-11m and less) The awesomely cool part is not the "color"; it is the fact that they can "see" the bonds instead of just infering their pressence. (I don't know if there is another way to directly observe chemical bonds but feel free to call me out on it.)

    14. Re:Not color, false color. by Let+them+eat+cake · · Score: 1

      The analogy in the article is technically correct. The atoms are actually "seen" in "color" by the microscope. Photons of light have an energy associated with them. For instance, blue light has a higher energy than red light. Sometimes when an electron scatters off of an atom in the sample, these electrons will lose a specific amount of energy which is related to the type of atom that they scattered from. If an electron looses allot of energy then it can be represented as blue while an electron which loses very little energy can be represented as red. This is similar to how we call photons of light at 450nm as blue and photons of light with 625 nm as red. So imagine that you see the world only in black and white. The brightness of an object is based entirely on the amount of light that is reflected, transmitted, or emitted by that object. This is how conventional electron microscopes normally create their images. However if you start discriminating the photons of light according to their energy now you can start assigning real colors to the objects in the world around you. This new microscope built by Nion can discriminate (at very high resolution) the energies of electrons that pass through a sample. In this way they can assign "colors" to the atoms in the sample.

    15. Re:Not color, false color. by davros-too · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The scientists quoted are top notch. I used to work with David Muller, and you can trust this to be both scientifically sound and bleeding-edge technically.

      I was *almost* doing this in the 1990s. I could have showed you a coloured image at atomic resolution with colours based on EELS spectra, but IIRC the contrast was mainly from electron-channeling and therefore bullshit. I'm confident that these guys have eliminated such effects.

      The uses of this technology in materials science will be enormous.

      --
      In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
    16. Re:Not color, false color. by SpiderClan · · Score: 0

      Electrons in the beam often actually "knock" the electrons out of the lower orbit, and then another electron from a higher orbit drops into the vacated space, and emits a characteristic X-Ray of energy equal to the energy difference between the two orbital shells. A drop from any orbital to any lower orbital of any element has emits a distinct X-Ray, but many are extremely close together and can lead to mistakes, and it is very slow to collect enough X-Rays to make a reasonable reading, at least on the equipment I used. All this to say that the correct word was, in fact, 'emit'.

    17. Re:Not color, false color. by Poromenos1 · · Score: 1

      IAATEL (I am a transmission electron microscopist) Not to get too technical here, but that's an "ell", you need an "em".

      Well, I suppose I did end up getting too technical! :P
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    18. Re:Not color, false color. by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 1

      you can clearly distinguish lanthanum from titanium, manganese, and manganese-lanthanum All well and good, but unfortunately these false colors need a bit more care in the selection process.

      Apparently you cannot "see" the difference between Krypton and Chlorine using this process.

      Which, quite frankly, can be quite fatal for some.
      --
      Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
    19. Re:Not color, false color. by koolguy442 · · Score: 1

      Microscopy's what I do. I never said I was good at acronymization.

      Though looking back at it, I feel really dumb because I don't know how I made such a blatant error, what with being capitalized and all!

    20. Re:Not color, false color. by doom · · Score: 1

      davros-too wrote:

      I was *almost* doing this in the 1990s. I could have showed you a coloured image at atomic resolution with colours based on EELS spectra, but IIRC the contrast was mainly from electron-channeling and therefore bullshit. I'm confident that these guys have eliminated such effects.

      Actually, you want to be very careful about getting involved with STEM work, because almost all of it is sample preparation, which is on the order of placing samples in a solvent and staring at them until you can start to see a light shining through them. This sort of thing gets old pretty fast.

      Which is not to say that they aren't pretty damn cool gadgets, even given their limitations. Atomic scale resolution combined with some ability to characterize the atoms and the chemical bonds? This is the sort of thing you can use to look at a heterojunction and see what you've really got there.

      (What I'd like to know is how good is it on lighter elements? If you can get an idea of, say, the Oxygen concentration, this would be just the thing for high-Tc superconductors.)

    21. Re:Not color, false color. by Poromenos1 · · Score: 1

      Heh, you just probably got confused with "ELectron", it's not that rare a mistake.

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    22. Re:Not color, false color. by davros-too · · Score: 1

      Sorry doom, just noticed your reply.

      Yes, sample prep can be a huge pain - ranging from about 1 hour on prep to one on the microscope to litterally dozens of hours prep per hour on microscope. It really depends a lot on what you're looking at.

      Beam damage is the other big problem. And that is where you might fall short on something like high-Tc superconductors. IIRC (and my knowledge is well out of date) these were fairly sensitive to beam damage.

      EELS is great for low-Z elements. I did most of my work on carbon. But beam damage, etc, I think it would be incredibly challenging to get anything useful at a near-atomic level on YBACUO family. Nevertheless, it could be worth your time to ask someone with more current knowledge than me!

      --
      In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
  2. Ahh Color... by clonan · · Score: 1

    And I thought we were beyond Technocolor !!!

    1. Re:Ahh Color... by l2718 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you were thinking of Technicolor ?

    2. Re:Ahh Color... by clonan · · Score: 1

      Or in this case TECHNO-color

    3. Re:Ahh Color... by l2718 · · Score: 1

      Are you under the impression I was referring to the photographic process? If so, follow the link.

    4. Re:Ahh Color... by clonan · · Score: 1

      Yes as was I until I did a typo ;)

  3. False Color by l2718 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "color-coding" the atoms is a better description for what's going on here. Since we are pretty good at absorboing visual information, it's a good way to present it, but one should be careful not to confuse the colors in the picture with the physical process used to get the information (which has nothing to do with visible light).

    1. Re:False Color by dido · · Score: 2, Insightful

      After all, an atom is smaller than a wavelength of visible light, so atoms are quite literally colorless.

      --
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  4. Schrodinger's Fridge by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The summary didn't say, but the colors MUST be false color, since atoms are smaller than light wavelengths. But will it allow you to photograph atoms without destroying them? (yes the link is humorous, but the question I ask is serious)

    --
    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    1. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by sconeu · · Score: 2, Funny

      But do we know if Schroedinger has milk in his Fridge without looking?

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    2. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Let's hope he has milk. Otherwise his poor cat would starve to death.

    3. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by treeves · · Score: 1

      Milk is the least of that cat's worries. The guy keeps the poor thing in a sealed box with a cyanide capsule for gosh sakes!

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    4. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 1

      But do we know if Schroedinger has milk in his Fridge without looking?
      And does the light go off when you close the door?
      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    5. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      but the colors MUST be false color, since atoms are smaller than light wavelengths. People say that, but it's not true. How do atomic gases have colour? Oh yes, individual atoms can absorb and emit light with wavelengths many times their own size. Strange but true, E.M. is weirder than people realise.http://amasci.com/tesla/tesceive.html
    6. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1
      And does the light go off when you close the door?


      If you're this guy, you never have to wonder about that question. (third paragraph)

      And for the record, I worked with this guy for a time.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    7. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by nguy · · Score: 1

      The summary didn't say, but the colors MUST be false color, since atoms are smaller than light wavelengths

      It is false color, but it wouldn't have to be. It's possible to probe individual atoms with visible light of different wavelengths using STMs.

    8. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hope someone's reported him to the SPCA!

    9. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by esocid · · Score: 3, Informative

      I doubt that they still survive the process. Organic cells are destroyed due to the direct irradiation with electrons necessary to produce the "photograph" from the microscope. There are ways around this, such as only focusing the beam on a small part of a specimen or to use a deflection technique that minimally exposes the specimen and deflects the electron beam to the viewing stage. Others are preirradiating the specimens at low doses to stabilize them for increased irradiation. There are other complex techniques outside the realm of my understanding, but I think it still is really tough to preserve organic cells during electron microscopy.

      --
      Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
    10. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently so.

    11. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by sm62704 · · Score: 1

      There's no milk in my fridge but there are three cats in my house. The cats eat cat food.

      What would a single man use milk for? At three dollars a gallon it would be cheaper to feed them gasoline. The only time I have milk in the fridge is when there's a woman living there. And it usually turns into stinky cottage cheese before it's half empty.

      Befor you ask, they're my daughter's cats. I got stuck with them when she moved to Ohio with her fiancee.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    12. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by sploxx · · Score: 1

      The summary didn't say, but the colors MUST be false color, since atoms are smaller than light wavelengths. But will it allow you to photograph atoms without destroying them? (yes the link is humorous, but the question I ask is serious) No. Nothing says that a single atom can't send or receive single photons. The size of "the EM field belonging to the photon" may be much larger, but so what?
      Look here for an example.
    13. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most atoms are heavy enough that the uncertainty in their position is very low TEMs do damage samples as they're bombarding them with high energy electrons, but it's not going to vaporize the atoms on the first go. You would see grains evolve and stuff like that, but if you're worried about damaging a sample with a TEM, you might think about the prep part - they need to somehow get the sample extremely thin so electrons can pass through it.

    14. Re:Schrodinger's Fridge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Organic cells are destroyed due to the direct irradiation with electrons necessary to produce the "photograph" from the microscope.


      I thought that SEMs killed organic matter because a high vacuum is required for imaging. Nothing to do with irradiation.

  5. And, Of Course... by Wandering+Wombat · · Score: 1

    The pink atoms won't let the black atoms share a molecule with them.

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  6. Proof at last... by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Funny

    So we'll finally know for certain that carbon is black, oxygen is red, nitrogen is blue, and hydrogen atoms really are white.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Proof at last... by chibiace · · Score: 1

      its amazing we can see in such an atmosphere!

      --
      he who controls the spice controls the universe
    2. Re:Proof at last... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2, Funny

      hydrogen atoms really are white.

      So that is why the Hindenburg didn't use Helium.

      --
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    3. Re:Proof at last... by CityZen · · Score: 1

      But I heard that the blue oxygen is better for you than the red oxygen.
      Too much of the red stuff and your mind starts to close, so they say.

  7. tHE nEW sKITTLES? by webword · · Score: 1

    Taste the Rainbow (of atoms)!

    Sorry, couldn't help myself. Marketing controls my mind. And yours.

    --
    How to Download YouTube Videos
  8. No native CMY support? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Unless it supports CYM color maps natively we will be forced to use Photoshop.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:No native CMY support? by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 1

      CMY: apartheid colour space, where Ks arent allowed.

      --
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  9. Atoms don't have color! by ramk13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least not how they are implying. Color as most people think of it has to do with absorbed, reflected and transmitted light. The arrangement of the atoms as much as the atoms themselves affect color. But individual atoms in a crystal don't have color, at least as most people understand. The headline makes it seems like you could come away saying, "So iron atoms really are red..." or something equivalently silly.

    1. Re:Atoms don't have color! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The headline makes it seems like you could come away saying, "So iron atoms really are red..." or something equivalently silly.

      Yeah but they're really cyan. They absorb the cyan part of the spectrum leaving the red stuff reflected.

    2. Re:Atoms don't have color! by porkThreeWays · · Score: 1

      The quantum nature of light is a bitch!

      --
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    3. Re:Atoms don't have color! by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Funny

      They just use smaller light, duh!

      --
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    4. Re:Atoms don't have color! by mikael · · Score: 1

      I thought it was more to do with the orbitals of the electrons rather than the atomic number of the atom, and the orbitals of the electrons depend on the crystalline arrangement of atoms, and whether they have been ionised or not. Even different ions of the same atom will have a different
        absorption spectrum and emission spectrum. So no atom has one unique color, but may have a series of wavelengths of light that it can emit, which our sight would perceive as a mix of red, green or blue wavelengths, but provide us with a specific visual interpretation (eg. greenish-blue).

      --
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    5. Re:Atoms don't have color! by raddan · · Score: 1

      True, but no one who actually uses one of these would make that mistake. This is pretty cool. Our visual systems are keyed into color differentiation (well, most of us, anyway)-- so it only makes sense to take advantage of that additional visual processing ability to convey more information to the microscopist.

    6. Re:Atoms don't have color! by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Well, it is all inter-related, but color absorption is all about electrons and energy levels. Photon hits electron, electron pops to higher level, electron falls to lower level, electron emits photon.

      The energies of those orbitals have everything to do with the sizes/masses/etc of the atoms they're bound to, and the number of electrons around them.

      The electrons that matter generally aren't bound to a single atom - they move in molecular orbitals around groups of atoms or larger. If you take a piece of steel the electrons in the conductivity bands basically form one massive orbital the size of the piece of steel and just move around freely from one side to the other (well, to the extent that electrons actually move as opposed to existing in a given state that has some charge distribution). Hence metal conducts really well - electrons go in on one side and electrons pop out the other.

      When you get into stuff like crystal field theory and molecular orbitals in chemistry you can start to get a feel for the responsible phenomena. The fact that we generally can't model orbitals perfectly for objects of any macroscopic size complicates things. However, for small molecules you can often predict the orbitals that will exist and which ones are populated and empty, and as a result get an idea for the spectral absorption of the molecule.

      Disclaimer - I'm a chemist but certainly not an expert in molecular orbitals/etc...

    7. Re:Atoms don't have color! by Atario · · Score: 1

      But that requires very tiny photons! Have you priced those lately? I'm not made of money! Leave me alone!

      --
      "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  10. well this is good research and all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but the more important questions are what do they smell and taste like?

    slashdot is becoming USAToday. sheesh.

  11. This thread is useless without pics! by Trigun · · Score: 1

    Pic, or it didn't happen!

    1. Re:This thread is useless without pics! by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Funny

      Picture here.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    2. Re:This thread is useless without pics! by Trigun · · Score: 1

      Man, that is so much better than I had expected!

  12. Microsoft Interview by slapout · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a Microsoft interview question: Why are man hole covers round? What color are atoms?

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
    1. Re:Microsoft Interview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Why are man hole covers round?

      I love this goofy question. I always answer "because manholes are round".

      I've seen plenty of rectangular ones in my day anyway.

    2. Re:Microsoft Interview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're round to make it impossible to drop a cover into the hole. The lip of the cover is larger around than the hole in the ground.

    3. Re:Microsoft Interview by geekoid · · Score: 1

      A: Because manholes are round!

      B: Octarine

      Correct answers they don't expect FTW!

      --
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    4. Re:Microsoft Interview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So why are they round, and not some other constant diameter shape?

  13. Yow! by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A STEM shoots an electron beam through a thin-film sample and scans the beam across the sample in subatomic steps.
    Holy crap! And we think 45nm is small!
    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  14. Made in the USA by treeves · · Score: 1
    The instrument is a new type of scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), built by the NION Company of Kirkland, Wash....

    I lived there when I was in elementary school. More important, a certain warehouse store has its headquarters there. So I wanna know when I'll be able to pick up one of these STEMs at Costco!

    --
    ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
  15. size of atoms wavelength of visible light by vivin · · Score: 1

    Good point. Also, atoms are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light. So they cannot reflect color.

    --
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    http://vivin.net

    I like
  16. Not really a breakthrough... by achosler · · Score: 1

    I've been able to see atoms in color for years, you just gotta light it, and remember to pull the slide out to clear it.

  17. What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by JoeGee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most of the space occupied by the atom is exactly that, space, nothing more. The electron cloud is a fuzzy region of probability, not a solid thing. The "side" of an atom must be defined by a force, not a particle?

    --

    Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
    1. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by esocid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It isn't so much a question of reflection, but more of capturing the excitation of electrons in the atoms that make up the sample by absorbing the irradiated energy. The electrons are excited into higher orbits, which gives off light that the "camera" on this microscope captures and resolves into a cleaner image. That is why organic samples are pretty much goners in EMs. They can't survive that much radiation.

      --
      Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
    2. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by esocid · · Score: 1

      I forgot to mention, the electrons are in the sample, not shot by the microscope. It uses EM radiation to excite the electrons in the sample.

      --
      Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
    3. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by kebes · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most of the space occupied by the atom is exactly that, space, nothing more. The electron cloud is a fuzzy region of probability, not a solid thing. The "side" of an atom must be defined by a force, not a particle? You're right that an atom is mostly empty space, but that doesn't matter. An electron microscope works by shooting a beam of electrons at the sample, and measuring how many of those electrons are transmitted (this is called a TEM; an SEM works differently). The electrons that didn't go straight through the sample were scattered by the atoms of the material. Remember that electrons are charged: as the incident electrons travel through the atoms there will be very strong Coulomb forces. The incident electrons will be repelled by the electrons in the material. This interaction is 'long-range' by subatomic standards: even though the electrons themselves are vanishingly small, the Coulomb interaction distance is quite large.

      To a first approximation, 'heavier' atoms (higher atomic number) will scatter electrons more strongly, since they have more electrons. On an electron micrograph, heavy atoms show up as dark (absorbed/scattered alot of electrons), whereas lighter atoms show up as being bright (most electrons were transmitted).

      I'm glossing over many details, of course. The important thing to remember is that the incident charged electrons are interacting with the charged electron density surrounding the atoms in the material.
    4. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by ruinevil · · Score: 1

      However, the thin slices and embedded heavy metal "stains" are totally conducive to life.

    5. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by Quadraginta · · Score: 2, Informative

      The electron cloud is a fuzzy region of probability, not a solid thing.

      Ah, the evil remnants of a flawed basic chemistry and/or atomic physics class.

      Just FYI -- not that it relates to this article -- this is wrong. So far as we know, an electron is a point particle, and the electrons in an atom aren't any different from a free electron. They are a collection of little points located at various definite positions. There's no "fuzziness" and they aren't "smeared out" in any sense at all. The "fuzzy cloud" you see drawn around atoms is just the probability distribution of where the electrons are. It's only fuzzy for the same reason a photo of a bridge at night shows the car headlights all smeared out: the image you've chosen to construct averages over some very fast motion in which you're not interested.

      It's amazing to me how often people end up so often misunderstanding [x,p] = ih, and how often teachers misstate its implications. It's not that you can't pinpoint the position of an electron exactly. It's that if you do, it then has a very indeterminate momentum, and you now have no clue where it will be in a few moments.

    6. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by SpiderClan · · Score: 0

      An SEM directs an electron beam at the sample. Are we thinking about the same instrument? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_electron_microscope#Scanning_process

    7. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm. I don't think I follow.

      So, each "blob" of light isn't solid?
      Are we saying each blob is mostly emptiness with a tiny "thing" in the middle, and electrons whizzing around its perimiter? And the reason it appears solid is because the electrons are whizzing faster than the picture was taken, making them appear in all places at once?

      Is that right ??

    8. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by Quadraginta · · Score: 1

      Yes, pretty much. There are some subtleties, of course, since you're working in the quantum regime.

    9. Re:What do the electrons "reflect" off of? by Scott+Carnahan · · Score: 1

      So far as we know, an electron is a point particle, and the electrons in an atom aren't any different from a free electron. They are a collection of little points located at various definite positions. There's no "fuzziness" and they aren't "smeared out" in any sense at all.

      I agree that electrons are point particles to the best of our knowledge. However, they are smeared out in the sense that they don't admit position eigenstates, so they are not located at definite positions. If you want to calculate a scattering amplitude, you have to integrate over a distribution of possible events, and I think it is reasonable to describe this as fuzziness.

      --
      "Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
  18. how to decide by hotwatermusic · · Score: 0

    Atom #1: Yeah, yeah, but "Mr. Brown"? That's little too close to "Mr. Shit".

    Atom #2: Yeah, "Mr. Pink" sounds like "Mr. Pussy". Tell you what, let me be Mr. Purple. That sounds good to me. I'm Mr. Purple.

    Scientist: You're *not* Mr. Purple. Somebody from another job's Mr. Purple. You're Mr. Pink!

  19. Next up by Fnord666 · · Score: 1

    Next thing you know they will have photos showing charm and spin as well! Will wonders never cease.

    --
    'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
  20. The FIRST time??? by dos4who · · Score: 1
    "...enabling scientists to see individual atoms in color for the very first time."...

    Actually, I'm guessing the folks over at NION (the company who built the thing) were the first... Somebody had to test it out, right?

    --
    "Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
    1. Re:The FIRST time??? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 1

      Beta-testing is for sissies.

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  21. Real Harmonic Color by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see these atoms rendered in necessarily false color (they're smaller than visible light wavelengths) that is at least the color corresponding to their size. They're smaller than visible wavelengths, but their actual size is a specific fraction of a visible wavelength. Let's see the atoms colored with the color that's a harmonic multiple.

    Or maybe the color should be derived from the "texture" of the atom, just like the actual color of macroscopic materials. If a carbon atom has 12 electrons evenly distributed around a sphere in shells (2, 8 and another 2 in valence), let's see it get colored accordingly. Maybe the inner shell's diameter harmonic color in the visible range, divided by 2 and scaled back into the visible, overlapped with the same algorithm for the outer 8 in the second shell, then again for the 2 in the outermost shell.

    The point is that these colors can mean something. And since the number and combination of electrons is so important to the characteristics of the electron, as well as offering the femtoscopic equivalent to macroscopic colored surfaces, I'd like to finally see what I've been imagining since high school chemistry class.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Real Harmonic Color by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First of all, carbon does not have 12 electrons, it has 6. Secondly, it has 4 valence electrons. [He]2s22p2.

      Although you did say "if".

    2. Re:Real Harmonic Color by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um, chief, carbon has 6 electrons.

      [He]2s22p2.

    3. Re:Real Harmonic Color by Scott+Carnahan · · Score: 1

      They're smaller than visible wavelengths, but their actual size is a specific fraction of a visible wavelength. Let's see the atoms colored with the color that's a harmonic multiple.

      I think you have a failure of uniqueness. If you have an atom with diameter 100pm, there are about three thousand wavelengths of visible light that are integer multiples of that. Which one will you choose?

      Or maybe the color should be derived from the "texture" of the atom, just like the actual color of macroscopic materials. If a carbon atom has 12 electrons evenly distributed around a sphere in shells (2, 8 and another 2 in valence), let's see it get colored accordingly. Maybe the inner shell's diameter harmonic color in the visible range, divided by 2 and scaled back into the visible, overlapped with the same algorithm for the outer 8 in the second shell, then again for the 2 in the outermost shell.

      Your sentences are difficult to parse. Are you suggesting that they use false color to reflect the electronic structure of the material? That seems to be exactly what they are doing. The specifics of your suggestion seem to be a bit suspect, though (including your apparent confusion between atomic number and atomic mass). One advantage of the techniques used here is that they can tell us about bonds between atoms, rather than just the atoms themselves.

      --
      "Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
    4. Re:Real Harmonic Color by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      The multiples of the wavelengths have to be harmonic, 2^n, not just simple multiples. That's how harmonics work. They will be unique: a given femtoscopic distance will have only a single frequency harmonic in the visible spectrum, because the visible spectrum fits within a single "octave", eg from f to (f*2).

      I am saying that the false color should indeed represent the electronic structure of the atom being colored. I did make a mistake substituting the atomic weight for atomic number (and therefore nuclear particle count for electron count). But what I mean is that carbon's 6 electrons fall into 2 shells (at ground state). The inner shell is filled with 2 electrons and has a diameter. That shell's diameter would be divided by the count of two electrons in it, to account for the equivalence to "texture" that a larger feature distance on a larger object's surface would create if the distances between many points were reflecting visible light. That tiny distance corresponds to a single wavelength that's 2^n times larger in the visible band. So that shell would be colored that corresponding color. The next shell would have its larger diameter divided by its 6 electrons and scaled harmonically to chose its color. Then the two colors would be mixed additively (as the electrons are so small compared to the shells that they would rarely block incoming photons, if photons were actually incident (which is what we're simulating). So, (to make up easily added colors), a red inner shell and a green outer shell would make the atom look yellow. This procedure would make the atom look like it would if it were actually scaled up by successive doubling to a size that reflects visible light.

      There are other variations on that coloring scheme that could show electronic properties. For example, instead of just dividing the shell diameter by its filled electron count to set its subharmonic color, the shell's fraction of filling electrons to its electron capacity (eg, carbon's 2/8 in its second shell) could divide the shell's diameter before scaling harmonically to set its color. Or that fraction could be used to set the brightness (or other linear property, like value or intensity, depending on the color model used) of that shell's color to emphasize how full it is. The nucleus might be colored the atom's ground state color, appearing in the center of the hues of the surrounding shells (perhaps with a simulated cleared cylindrical "peephole" so its "default" color isn't mixed with the overlapping shells) as electrons migrate when the atom is excited. Bonds likewise would recolor the atoms as electrons are distributed between atoms and shells.

      All of these techniques would illustrate intuitively the quantities and distributions they represent. So people could bring to bear our other learned experience with color to understand the properties and dynamics even at this tiny scale. Interactions with photons could be especially obvious to even untrained viewers, as harmonically colored photons interact (or don't) with identically (or not) colored atomic shells, shuffling the resulting electron counts.

      And the technique I describe is easy to compute, and easy for current 3D HW and SW to render. So elaborate animations should be straightforward to produce. Beautiful and educational.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  22. snorkfud? by Walking+The+Walk · · Score: 1

    Who tagged this snorkfud, and what on earth does it mean? A google search just hits this slashdot article and a dummy website.

    --
    A recursive sig
    Can impart wisdom and truth
    Call proc signature()
    1. Re:snorkfud? by Faylone · · Score: 1

      Perhaps The Snorks now work for Microsoft?

  23. Hardly the first time that color=species of atom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Atom-probe tomography, chemical-sensitive SPM techniques, etc. all show atoms in color.

  24. Screenshot by peterpi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Screenshot:

                    .

  25. There's a nice AFM technique which does this too by Sockatume · · Score: 1

    Atomic force microscopy (AFM) uses the weak Van der Waals-type interactions between the atoms in a probe, and the surface itself, to measure the locations of atoms. They also developed a qualitative way of identifying the atoms, by measuring the variation of the strength of interaction with probe height. It's not as neat as being able to read real-life energy level information out of atoms, mind you.

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    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  26. Coming to a store near you... by mojotooth · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The instrument is a new type of scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), built by the NION Company of Kirkland, Wash


    Kirkland? Awesome, that means it should be available at Costco real soon now.


    --
    -- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
  27. Atoms/molecules really might have colour? by Twinbee · · Score: 1

    General science question: If wavelengths of light are too large to find out the colour of atom or molecule (or 100 molecules), then why can't you use much finer wavelengths to measure, and scale the results up to the range we can see?

    --
    Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
  28. Three R's... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Royal Raymond Rife

  29. Actually, it *is* real color. by CustomDesigned · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The color is based on the energy of the electrons, just like photon "color" is based on the energy of individual photons. The microscope is "color" because it can record the energy of the electrons as well as their density. Thus it is "color" just as much as your eyes - which measure photon energy (cone cells of 2 to 3 or in some cases 4 types) as well as photon density (rod cells). Note that your cone cells require more light to get a color signal. In dim light, you see black and white via your rod cells only - the situation with earlier electron microscopes. By increasing the electron capture 10 fold, true electron color vision is enabled.

    1. Re:Actually, it *is* real color. by davros-too · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sorry, no. The colours are atom types as inferred from the energy loss spectra - for example in one image lanthanum is coloured green.

      --
      In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
    2. Re:Actually, it *is* real color. by CustomDesigned · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, energy loss spectra - as in electron energy. As in "color". Electron energy is "color". Just like photon energy.

  30. DIY STM by the_kanzure · · Score: 1

    $100 - put together an STM (or another instrument of your desire; scroll down for the relevant links and text).

  31. Is it true ... by PPH · · Score: 1

    ... that the green ones are aphrodisiacs?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  32. Phew, what a relief! by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

    I was imagining all the trouble involved in re-learning the atomic color schemes!

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  33. Sounds like by BluenoseJake · · Score: 1

    They are using a Heisenberg compensator.