An electron microscope is a type of microscope that uses electrons to illuminate a specimen and create an enlarged image. Electron microscopes have much greater resolving power than light microscopes and can obtain much higher magnifications. Some electron microscopes can magnify specimens up to 2 million times, while the best light microscopes are limited to magnifications of 2000 times. Both electron and light microscopes have resolution limitations, imposed by their wavelength. The greater resolution and magnification of the electron microscope is due to the wavelength of an electron, its de Broglie wavelength, being much smaller than that of a light photon, electromagnetic radiation.

The electron microscope uses electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses in forming the image by controlling the electron beam to focus it at a specific plane relative to the specimen in a manner similar to how a light microscope uses glass lenses to focus light on or through a specimen to form an image.

History

Reinhold Rudenberg, the research director of Siemens, had patented the electron microscope in 1931, although Siemens was doing no research on electron microscopes at that time. In 1937 Siemens began funding Ruska and Bodo von Borries to develop an electron microscope. Siemens also employed Ruska's brother Helmut to work on applications, particularly with biological specimens.

In the same decade Manfred von Ardenne pioneered the scanning electron microscope and his universal electron microscope.

Siemens produced the first commercial TEM in 1939, but the first practical electron microscope had been built at the University of Toronto in 1938, by Eli Franklin Burton and students Cecil Hall, James Hillier, and Albert Prebus.

Although modern electron microscopes can magnify objects up to two million times, they are still based upon Ruska's prototype. The electron microscope is an essential item of equipment in many laboratories. Researchers use them to examine biological materials (such as microorganisms and cells), a variety of large molecules, medical biopsy samples, metals and crystalline structures and the characteristics of various surfaces. The electron microscope is also used extensively for inspection, quality assurance and failure analysis applications in industry, including, in particular, semiconductor device fabrication.

Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM)

main: Transmission electron microscope The original form of electron microscope, Transmission electron microscope (TEM) involves a high voltage electron beam emitted by an electron gun, usually fitted with a tungsten filament cathode as the electron source. The electron beam is accelerated by an anode typically at +100keV (40 to 400 keV) with respect to the cathode, focused by electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses, and transmitted through a specimen that is in part transparent to electrons and in part scatters them out of the beam. When it emerges from the specimen, the electron beam carries information about the structure of the specimen that is magnified by the objective lens system of the microscope. The spatial variation in this information (the "image") is viewed by projecting the magnified electron image onto a fluorescent viewing screen coated with a phosphor or scintillator material such as zinc sulfide. The image can be photographically recorded by exposing a photographic film or plate directly to the electron beam, or a high-resolution phosphor may be coupled by means of a lens optical system or a fibre optic light-guide to the sensor of a CCD (charge-coupled device) camera. The image detected by the CCD may be displayed on a monitor or computer.