Potentialities and limitations of high-resolution electron microscopy of crystal lattices and their imperfections

The resolving power of modern electron microscopes is better than 0.3 nm. This enables images to be formed which show detail at the level of interatomic distances. However the relatively strong scattering of electrons means that when images from crystals are obtained, the image detail is not generally easy to interpret in terms of crystal structure. Recently much attention has been paid to devising experimental methods of forming images which will both utilize the high resolving power of the microscope, and at the same time produce images whose detail can be interpreted in terms of structure in a relatively straightforward manner. The method of lattice fringe images has been of particular importance in this area.