{"id":199768,"date":"2024-11-19T15:24:42","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T21:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/electron-imaging-reveals-the-vibrant-colors-of-the-outermost-electron-layer"},"modified":"2024-11-19T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T21:24:42","slug":"electron-imaging-reveals-the-vibrant-colors-of-the-outermost-electron-layer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/electron-imaging-reveals-the-vibrant-colors-of-the-outermost-electron-layer","title":{"rendered":"Electron imaging reveals the vibrant colors of the outermost electron layer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/electron-imaging-reveals-the-vibrant-colors-of-the-outermost-electron-layer3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Surfaces play a key role in numerous chemical reactions, including catalysis and corrosion. Understanding the atomic structure of the surface of a functional material is essential for both engineers and chemists. Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan used atomic-resolution secondary electron (SE) imaging to capture the atomic structure of the very top layer of materials to better understand the differences from its lower layers. The researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/jmicro\/advance-article\/doi\/10.1093\/jmicro\/dfae041\/7762293\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> their findings in the journal <i>Microscopy.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Some materials exhibit \u201csurface reconstruction,\u201d where the surface atoms are organized differently from the interior atoms. To observe this, especially at the atomic level, surface-sensitive techniques are needed.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, scanning <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/electron+microscopy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electron microscopy<\/a> (SEM) has been an effective tool to examine nanoscale structures. SEM works by scanning a sample with a focused electron beam and capturing the SEs emitted from the surface. SEs are typically emitted from a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/shallow+depth\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">shallow depth<\/a> below the surface, making it difficult to observe phenomena like surface reconstruction, especially if only a single atomic layer is involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Surfaces play a key role in numerous chemical reactions, including catalysis and corrosion. Understanding the atomic structure of the surface of a functional material is essential for both engineers and chemists. Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan used atomic-resolution secondary electron (SE) imaging to capture the atomic structure of the very top layer of materials [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}