New Microscope So Absurdly Fast It Can See Electrons In Motion

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Behold the world’s fastest microscope: capable of capturing the first clear images of electrons in motion.

Developed by researchers at the University of Arizona and published in the journal Science, the instrument fires electron pulses lasting a single attosecond—one quintillionth of a second—to produce crisp “freeze frames” of these subatomic particles, which can circle the Earth in mere seconds.

The advance opens a new window into ultrafast processes such as chemical-bond breaking, letting scientists observe exactly how electrons behave during these fleeting interactions.

“For the first time, we are able to attain attosecond temporal resolution with our electron transmission microscope—and we coined it ‘attomicroscopy,’” said study co-author Mohammed Hassan, associate professor of physics and optical sciences at the University of Arizona. “We can see pieces of the electron in motion.”

Incremental Improvement

Earlier electron microscopes had approached this regime, reaching speeds measured in several attoseconds rather than one. At the subatomic scale, however, that gap is enormous: without single-attosecond resolution, many subtle electron interactions remained invisible.

In photographic terms, the instruments simply lacked a fast enough shutter.

Pulse-Pounding

To cross the threshold, the Arizona team engineered their “attomicroscope” to split a laser into one electron pulse and two precisely timed light pulses. The electron pulse performs the actual imaging, but its timing is everything.

The first light pulse excites the sample’s electrons into motion; the second pulse then triggers the electron beam to arrive at exactly the right instant. Interactions between the beam and the sample are recorded by a camera sensor and assembled into moving images.

“With this microscope, we hope the scientific community can understand the quantum physics behind how an electron behaves and how an electron moves,” Hassan said.

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