Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new microscopy technique that uses a process similar to how an old tube television produces a picture—called cathodoluminescence—to image nanoscale features. Combining the best features of optical and scanning electron microscopy, the fast, versatile, and high-resolution technique allows scientists to view surface and subsurface features potentially as small as 10 nanometers in size.

The new microscopy technique, described in an article published in the journal AIP Advances, uses a beam of electrons to excite a specially engineered array of quantum dots, causing them to emit low-energy visible light very close to the surface of the sample, exploiting so-called “near-field” effects of light. By correlating the local effects of this emitted light with the position of the electron beam, spatial images of these effects can be reconstructed with nanometer-scale resolution.

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