Key Points
- Scientists at MIT have developed a way for a standard optical microscope to see individual atoms.
- The new computational technique, called DIGIT, overcomes the long-standing “diffraction limit” of light.
- It works by using the known atomic structure of a material as a “map” to sharpen the blurry optical image.
- The method can pinpoint atoms with a resolution of 0.178 angstroms, the sharpest ever for an optical technique.
In a breakthrough, scientists at MIT have developed a new technique that allows a regular optical microscope to see individual atoms for the first time. The discovery published in Nature Communications shatters a long-standing physical barrier known as the “diffraction limit”. It opens up a whole new way to study materials and biology at the atomic level.
For over a century, it was thought to be impossible to see anything smaller than a wavelength of light with a standard optical microscope. This meant that individual atoms, which are thousands of times smaller, were completely invisible. While advanced techniques like electron microscopy can see atoms, they are harsh and can’t be used on delicate living samples.
The new method, called DIGIT, is a computational trick. It takes the blurry images from an optical microscope and sharpens them by using a crucial piece of information that was previously ignored: the material’s known atomic structure.
“It’s like you know there’s a seating chart,” explained Sophia Duan, the lead author of the study. “Previous methods could tell you what section an atom is in. But now we can take this seating chart as prior knowledge, and can pinpoint exactly which seat the atom is in.”
By using the known “map” of a material’s atomic grid, the researchers were able to pinpoint the exact location of individual atoms with incredible precision. The team says the technique could be a game-changer for designing quantum devices and for understanding how defects in materials affect their properties.
