Microscopes don’t exactly lie, but their limitations affect the truths they can tell. For example, scanning electron microscopes simply can’t see materials that don’t conduct electricity very well, and their high energies can actually damage some types of samples.

In an effort to extract a little more truth from the world of nanomaterials and nanostructures, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built the first low-energy focused ion beam (FIB) microscope that uses a lithium ion source.

Scanning ion microscopy with low energy lithium ions

The team’s new approach opens up the possibility of creating a whole category of FIBs using any one of up to 20 different elements, greatly increasing the options for imaging, sculpting, or characterizing materials.

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