Electron tomography technique leads to 3-D reconstructions at the nanoscale

Understanding the microscopic structure of a material is key to understanding how it functions and its functional properties. Advances in fields like materials science have increasingly pushed abilities to determine these features to even higher resolutions. One technique for imaging at nanoscale resolution, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), is one example of promising technology in this area. Scientists recently found a way to harness the power of TEM to measure the structure of a material at the highest possible resolution—determining the 3-D position of every individual atom.