Researchers who set the record for the highest-resolution microscope in 2018 outdid their own performance by capturing the most detailed image of an atom via a device that magnifies pictures 100 million times.
According to Scientific American, physicists used ptychography, which is an approach where an electron beam is shot at an object. The beam bounces off and produces a scan, that the algorithms then use to reverse engineer an image.
David Muller at Cornell University in New York and his colleagues captured the image with a praseodymium orthoscandate crystal.
Previously, this technique could be used to capture images of things that were a few atoms thick.
Now, however, scientists have developed a technique that can zoom into samples 30 to 50 nanometers wide, which is 10 times more than the previous resolution, the paper published in Science said.
With this breakthrough, experts will be able to visualize the components of an atom and might be able to create more efficient batteries and other electronics.
