This is the most detailed look at individual atoms ever captured

The highest-resolution image of atoms so far has been captured, breaking a record set in 2018.

David Muller at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues captured this image using a praseodymium orthoscandate crystal. They used a technique called ptychography, in which they used an electron microscope to analyse the crystal by calculating the angles of scattered electrons to work out the shape of the atoms that scattered them.

This image is double the resolution of a zoomed-in image of atoms made in 2018 by Muller and his team, which was itself triple the resolution of others taken at the time with different techniques.

In 2018, Muller and his team used a 2D material to limit the amount of electron scattering that happens in a thicker material and makes it difficult to tell where the electrons had scattered from.

“The key breakthrough we had this year was we figured out a way to unscramble this multiple scattering, and this is an 80-year-old problem,” says Muller. “For 80 years we haven’t had a general solution and now with some very clever algorithms developed by our colleagues [who work with x-rays] and then modified for electron scattering, we were able to untangle this multiple scattering.”

This allowed the team to look at thicker samples and achieve a better resolution. The blurring in the current image comes from the movement of the atoms themselves (pictured above).

“We can do a little bit better by cooling the sample down because when you cool the sample, the atoms don’t jiggle as much,” says Muller.