Detail

The image above was taken in 2021. Those dots are atoms in a crystal lattice of a piece of material called Praseodymium orthoscandate. The image looks a little blurry not just because of the low resolution, but because the atoms don’t stop moving fast, which causes some blurring.

Scientists say that no matter how good the technology gets, this record resolution will never be broken. That’s because there’s a limit to how much resolution we can achieve at these atomic scales, and that’s pretty much it.

“This is not just a new record. We’ve reached a regime that is effectively the ultimate limit of resolution. We can now find where atoms are in a very simple way. This opens up a whole new set of possibilities for measuring things that we’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
– says physicist David Muller of Cornell University.

This achievement is the result of work at the cutting edge of atomic imaging technology. typography. Ptychography is not actually a direct imaging technique with photography, but a type of interferometry. It is the production of images from interference patterns. Here is how it works:

• Scientists bombard a sample of Praseodymium orthocandate with electrons.
• When electrons hit the atoms of the material, they are reflected, making it possible to measure the nature of the bounce or scattering during the travel of the beam.
• By recording the position of the reflected electrons, the imaging system can create an image of what the electrons are bouncing off of.

Praseodymium orthoscandate is a complex compound so we can see three different types of atoms in the picture. The bright pairs of spots that come together are Praseodymium. The single bright spots are Scandium. And the dull red spots are Oxygen. All of these atoms bond together to form a crystal.

Conclusions and perspectives

Breakthroughs in atomic imaging have implications and applications in physics and engineering, and offer us a fantastic opportunity to study atomic structures at high resolution and in three dimensions. We can use this in a multitude of fields, from materials science to quantum communications.

We want to apply this to everything we do. We’ve all worn really bad glasses up until now. And now we have a really nice pair. Why don’t you take your old glasses off, put on some new ones, and wear them all the time?
– says Mueller.

Although this method is time-consuming and computationally intensive, it can be made more efficient with more powerful computers combined with machine learning and faster detectors.