Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)

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This is a picture taken by an electronic microscope of very tiny balls of silver in a colloidal suspension. Each silver ball is only 100 – 150 atoms across (about 50 nanometres in diameter). Here the silver particles are misbehaving, attaching to a small piece of debris in the solution! Scientists at the Victoria University Raman Spectroscopy Laboratory use these particles to enhance the electromagnetic fields produced by powerful lasers so they can study individual molecules. On the day this picture was taken they were studying die molecules important in biology research.

Electron Microscopes

With a light microscope you can’t see anything much smaller than a wavelength of light (about 0.5 microns or 0.0005 mm). That’s much too big to see atoms and molecules and is too big to see some of the things we make such as the electronic components on an integrated circuit.

An electron microscope makes use of the wave-like properties of electrons to produce images that can have much, much finer details. Electron microscopes can even take pictures of individual atoms!

The School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University has an excellent electron microscope facility with transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes. Scientists and students use the facility extensively.

Here’s a picture of a human hair taken with one of the electron microscopes at Victoria

By the way, it’s amazing, but a transistor on a modern integrated circuit is so small that it looks like a dot on one of these hairs! Physicists design, develop, and use electron microscopes in electronics technology, physics research, materials research, and other endeavours.

How do I get started?

Visit the Electron Microscope Facility to learn more about electron microscopes.