An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of "illumination". It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it to produce magnified images or electron diffraction patterns. As the wavelength of an electron can be more than 100,000 times smaller than that of visible light, electron microscopes have a much higher resolution of about 0.1 nm, which compares to about 200 nm for light microscopes. Electron microscope may refer to: Transmission electron microscope (TEM) where swift electrons go through a thin sample Scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) which is similar to TEM with a scanned electron probe Scanning electron microscope (SEM) which is similar to STEM, but with thick samples Electron microprobe similar to a SEM, but more for chemical analysis Low-energy electron microscope (LEEM), used to image surfaces Photoemission electron microscope (PEEM) which is similar to LEEM using electrons emitted from surfaces by photons Additional details can be found in the above links.
This article contains some general information about different types of these instruments, mainly about transmission and scanning electron microscopes with a little information about other types and brief sections with links to longer articles about some of the ways to use these instruments, how to make samples and some of the limitations.
History
Many developments laid the groundwork of the electron optics used in microscopes. One significant step was the work of Hertz in 1883 who made a cathode-ray tube with electrostatic and magnetic deflection, demonstrating manipulation of the direction of an electron beam. Others were focusing of the electrons by an axial magnetic field by Emil Wiechert in 1899, improved oxide-coated cathodes which produced more electrons by Arthur Wehnelt in 1905 and the development of the electromagnetic lens in 1926 by Hans Busch. According to Dennis Gabor, the physicist Leó Szilárd tried in 1928 to convince him to build an electron microscope, for which Szilárd had filed a patent.Dannen, Gene (1998) Leo Szilard the Inventor: A Slideshow (1998, Budapest, conference talk). dannen.com To this day the issue of who invented the transmission electron microscope is controversial.. In 1928, at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), Adolf Matthias (Professor of High Voltage Technology and Electrical Installations) appointed Max Knoll to lead a team of researchers to advance research on electron beams and cathode-ray oscilloscopes. The team consisted of several PhD students including Ernst Ruska. In 1931, Max Knoll and Ernst Ruska successfully generated magnified images of mesh grids placed over an anode aperture. The device, a replicate of which is shown in the figure, used two magnetic lenses to achieve higher magnifications, the first electron microscope. (Max Knoll died in 1969, so did not receive a share of the 1986 Nobel prize for the invention of electron microscopes.)
Apparently independent of this effort was work at Siemens-Schuckert by Reinhold Rüdenberg. According to patent law (U.S. Patent No. 2058914 and 2070318, both filed in 1932), he is the inventor of the electron microscope, but it is not clear when he had a working instrument. He stated in a very brief article in 1932 that Siemens had been working on this for some years before the patents were filed in 1932, claiming that his effort was parallel to the university development. He died in 1961, so similar to Max Knoll, was not eligible for a share of the 1986 Nobel prize.
In the following year, 1933, Ruska and Knoll built the first electron microscope that exceeded the resolution of an optical (light) microscope. Four years later, in 1937, Siemens financed the work of Ernst Ruska and Bodo von Borries, and employed Helmut Ruska, Ernst's brother, to develop applications for the microscope, especially with biological specimens. Also in 1937, Manfred von Ardenne pioneered the scanning electron microscope. Siemens produced the first commercial electron microscope in 1938.History of electron microscopy, 1931–2000. Authors.library.caltech.edu (2002-12-10). Retrieved on 2017-04-29. The first North American electron microscopes were constructed in the 1930s, at the Washington State University by Anderson and Fitzsimmons and at the University of Toronto by Eli Franklin Burton and students Cecil Hall, James Hillier, and Albert Prebus. Siemens produced a transmission electron microscope (TEM) in 1939. Although current transmission electron microscopes are capable of two million times magnification, as scientific instruments they remain similar but with improved optics.
In the 1940s, high-resolution electron microscopes were developed, enabling greater magnification and resolution. By 1965, Albert Crewe at the University of Chicago introduced the scanning transmission electron microscope using a field emission source, enabling scanning microscopes at high resolution. By the early 1980s improvements in mechanical stability as well as the use of higher accelerating voltages enabled imaging of materials at the atomic scale. In the 1980s, the field emission gun became common for electron microscopes, improving the image quality due to the additional coherence and lower chromatic aberrations. The 2000s were marked by advancements in aberration-corrected electron microscopy, allowing for significant improvements in resolution and clarity of images.
Types of electron microscopes
Transmission electron microscope (TEM)
The original form of the electron microscope, the transmission electron microscope (TEM), uses a high voltage electron beam to illuminate the specimen and create an image. An electron beam is produced by an electron gun, with the electrons typically having energies in the range 20 to 400 keV, focused by electromagnetic lenses, and transmitted through a thin specimen. When it emerges from the specimen, the electron beam carries information about the structure of the specimen that is then magnified by the lenses of the microscope. The spatial variation in this information (the "image") may be viewed by projecting the magnified electron image onto a detector. For example, the image may be viewed directly by an operator using a fluorescent viewing screen coated with a phosphor or scintillator material such as zinc sulfide. More commonly a high-resolution phosphor is coupled by means of a lens optical system or a fibre optic light-guide to the sensor of a digital camera.
For many years the resolution of TEMs was limited by aberrations of the electron optics, primarily the spherical aberration. In most recent instruments hardware correctors can reduce spherical aberration and other aberrations, improving the resolution in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) to below 0.5 angstrom (50 picometres), enabling magnifications of more than 50 million times. The ability of HRTEM to determine the positions of atoms within materials is useful for many areas of research and development.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM)
An SEM produces images by probing the specimen with a focused electron beam that is scanned across the specimen (raster scanning). When the electron beam interacts with the specimen, it loses energy and is scattered in different directions by a variety of mechanisms. These interactions lead to, among other events, emission of low-energy secondary electrons and high-energy backscattered electrons, light emission (cathodoluminescence) or X-ray emission. All of these signals carrying information about the specimen, such as the surface topography and composition. The image displayed when using an SEM shows the variation in the intensity of any of these signals as an image. In these each position in the image corresponding to a position of the beam on the specimen when the signal was generated.
SEMs are different from TEMs in that they use electrons with much lower energy, generally below 20 keV, while TEMs generally use electrons with energies in the range of 80-300 keV. Thus, the electron sources and optics of the two microscopes have different designs, and they are normally separate instruments.
Scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM)
A STEM combines features of both a TEM and a SEM by rastering a focused incident probe across a specimen, but now mainly using the electrons which are transmitted through the sample. Many types of imaging are common to both TEM and STEM, but some such as annular dark-field imaging and other analytical techniques are much easier to perform with higher spatial resolutions in a STEM instrument. One drawback is that image data is acquired in serial rather than in parallel fashion.
Low-voltage electron microscope
A low-voltage instrument uses much lower accelerating voltages, typically of a few kiloelectronvolts (keV) or less. They can be used as transmission instruments with very thin samples. A slightly different type of microscope called a LEEM uses the electrons diffracted back from a sample.
High-voltage electron microscope A high voltage electron microscope is one which operates using much higher energies for the electrons. These instruments were mainly used for imaging thicker samples or for specialized applications such as studying radiation damage. These instruments are much larger than standard transmission electron microscopes; for instance a microscope in Osaka, Japan holds the record for voltage, operating using electrons of energy up to 3MeV, and was about four stories high.
Aberration corrected instruments
Aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (AC-TEM) is the general term for electron microscopes where electro optical components are introduced to reduce the aberrations that would otherwise limit the resolution of the images. Historically electron microscopes had quite severe aberrations, and until about the start of the 21st century the resolution was limited, able to image the atomic structure of materials if the atoms were far enough apart. Around the turn of the century the electron optical components were coupled with computer control of the lenses and their alignment, enabling correction of aberrations. The first demonstration of aberration correction in TEM mode was by Harald Rose and Maximilian Haider in 1998 using a hexapole corrector, and in STEM mode by Ondrej Krivanek and Niklas Dellby in 1999 using a quadrupole/octupole corrector.
As of 2025 correction of geometric aberrations is standard in many commercial electron microscopes, and they are extensively used in many different areas of science. Similar correctors have also been used at much lower energies for LEEM instruments. Reflection electron microscope (REM) In a reflection electron microscope (REM), as in the TEM, an electron beam is incident on a surface but instead of using the transmission (TEM) or secondary electrons (SEM), the reflected beam of elastically scattered electrons is detected. This technique is typically coupled with reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and reflection high-energy loss spectroscopy (RHELS). Another variation is spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy (SPLEEM), which is used for looking at the microstructure of magnetic domains.
Main operating modes The most common methods of obtaining images in an electron microscope involve selecting different directions for the electrons that have been transmitted through a sample, and/or electrons of different energies. There are a very large number of methods of doing this, although not all are very common.
Secondary electrons