Can You Keep Zooming In Infinitely?

Summary by Krater

This video explains the history and physics of electron microscopes, focusing on how scientists overcame spherical aberration using hexapole, octopole, and decapole magnets to finally achieve atomic resolution.

From the video

Answers: How do electron microscopes achieve atomic resolution?

• Electron microscopes
• Spherical aberration
• Transmission electron microscopy
• Magnetic lenses
• Aberration correction
• Atomic resolution imaging

What it concludes

• Directly seeing atoms was long thought to be impossible because the wavelength of visible light is much larger than an atom.
• Electrons have much smaller wavelengths than light, making them suitable candidates for imaging at the atomic scale.
• Spherical aberration sets a hard limit on how small you can see with magnetic lenses by distorting electrons further out from the center.
• Otto Ruska and Max Knoll built the first working transmission electron microscope in 1931 using electromagnetic lenses.
• Otto Scherzer proved in a 1936 paper that it is impossible to produce a radially symmetric magnetic lens that diverges, creating a major roadblock for electron microscopy.
• Max Haider, Ondrej Krivanek, and Harald Rose successfully used hexapole, octopole, and decapole magnets to correct spherical aberration in electron microscopes, winning the 2020 Kavli Prize.