Talk:Electron microscope

See also

• Angular resolution
• Microscope image processing
• Microscope slide
• Microscopy
• Microscopy laboratory in: A Study Guide to the Science of Botany at Wikibooks
• Telescope
• Acronyms in microscopy
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Diffusion
• Low Temperature
• Luminsecence
• Molecular Orientation
• Nanoscale Plasma
• Nanoscience
• Nanotechnology
• Nanotribology
• Single molecule fluorescence
• Spectroscopy
• Surface science

References

• Max Planck Research Group
• Nanotube helium sensors could bring atom beam microscope
• [F1]:"Phase-coherent amplification of atomic matter waves" (Nature 1999/12, S. INOUYE, T. PFAU, S. GUPTA, A. P. CHIKKATUR, A. GÖRLITZ, D. E. PRITCHARD & W. KETTERLE )
• D.A. MacLaren, H. T. Goldrein, B. Holst and W. Allison, Phase-stepping optical profilometry of atom mirrors, J. Phys. D., 36, 1842-1849, 2003
• D. A. MacLaren, B. Holst, D. Riley and W. Allison, Focusing elements and design considerations for a scanning helium microscope (SHeM), SurfaceReview and Letters, 10, 249-255, 2003
• Why use a Stem and not a Tem?

External links

• Directory of Microscopy & Microanalysis Meetings/ShortCourses/Conferences 2006
• A virtual polarization microscope (requires Java)

um there should be a few sentences explaining WHY (wavelength of light vs electrons etc) electron microscopes work better than light ones...and there should be a pro/con section comparing the two (EM can only view dead samples as requires a vacuum, only has monochrome images, etc.) my $0.02.

RfC: what next with this page

To editors Materialscientist, Martin Ošmera, FuzzyMagma, Plantsurfer, Esem0, Niashervin and Graham Beards: this is a ping to people who might be interested in EM. This is the main entry page for all the other electron microscopy pages, and has a significant number of daily views. It has two parts:

• Overview of electron microscopes and operating modes
• Sample preparation

I am going to leave the second out of this missive as the issues for that can (should) come later. I have been slowly adding to the overview, mainly text with links and a few sources (more still needed). I want to open a debate about what more should go in, if anything. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, not a textbook and we definitely do not want long sections on all the modalities -- that is what subpages are for (see Template:Electron microscopy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Category:Electron microscopes). For discussion:

1. Do we include all the techniques in the Template, or a one-sentence description of each?
2. More SEM?
3. Less of something?
4. etc

N.B., while I put "RfC" in the title, I did not make this a formal RfC. I am going to cross post to WT:Physics and WT:Chemistry and maybe one or two others. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:35, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't think I can contribute much to writing atm, but should there be a delineation between Electron microscopy (a redirect here) and Electron microscope, similar to Microscopy and Microscope? The potential Electron microscopy article could be a WP:BROAD-type article that summarizes techniques/lines of inquiry and this article could focus on the equipment itself with more emphasis on physics/engineering alongside history. This isn't how the TEM and SEM articles are organized. Transmission electron microscope redirects to Transmission electron microscopy. Scanning electron microscopy redirects to Scanning electron microscope... Maybe, all I have the appetite for is to harmonize the article naming on this side of microscopy. ⇌ Synpath 20:16, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ldm1954: note that Template:Electron microscopy is not shown to more than 50% of the readers of this page (mobile users). So yes, there should be a list of all techniques Ponor (talk) 07:00, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with @Synpath on the delineation between "microscope" and "microscopy". The inclusion of every EM modality and sample preparation method is what really bogs this page down imo.

Maybe the page for Transmission Electron Microscope could be focused on history, theory, and modern hardware; whereas the Transmission Electron Microscopy page would be focused on the history of TEM methods including sample prep. I think SEM could be separated into its own set of pages as well, but a more complicated question is whether STEM should be kept with TEM, I would probably think so but I have no strong opinion. Niashervin (talk) 17:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I was leaving sample preparation out of the discussion, but since you raised it my thinking is that it should be separated out into a different page (as I suggested a little earlier). This page then becomes more manageable. We can still split further content out of here...so lets continue this discussion to get a good consensus first. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:33, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Two more steps

1. Remove the workflow section, it seems out of pkace
2. Add SE & BSE imaging

I think it is then just the boring job of references and some updated figs. Added here for comments. Ldm1954 (talk) 02:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)