The research group of Associate Professor Naoya Shibata, Specially Appointed Researcher Taketo Seki, and Professor Yuichi Ikuhara of the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering Research Organization is a state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) method and multi-division developed independently. For the first time in the world, we succeeded in directly observing the electric field distributed inside one gold atom using a type detector.This achievement was published in the US scientific journal "Nature Communications (online breaking news)" on May 2017, 5.

　Until now, it has been difficult to directly observe the internal structure of an atom (nucleus and electron cloud surrounding it) with an electron microscope, but this time, the group is at the cutting edge with a resolution of 0.05 nanometers (nm) or less. Using STEM and a multi-segment detector originally developed, we succeeded in visualizing for the first time in the world how an electric field is erupting from a positive electron nucleus inside a gold atom toward a negative electron cloud.

　Currently, electron microscopes are widely used not only in basic research fields such as physical chemistry and electronic information engineering, but also in various industrial fields such as semiconductor devices, medical care, IT, energy creation and energy saving.Improving electron microscope performance will be the driving force for significantly improving the level and efficiency of nanotechnology R & D in these areas.This research shows that the level of electron microscope technology in Japan is the highest in the world, and provides an opportunity to improve nanotechnology research and development in each field.

Paper information:[Nature Communications] Electric field imaging of single atoms