REAL-SPACE IMAGING OF SURFACES BY ELECTRON-SCATTERING IN THE KILOELECTRONVOLT RANGE

A method is presented with which near-surface structures of crystals can be made visible in real space and real time. An electron beam of a few kiloelectronvolts energy is focused on to a specimen, and the reflected electrons are imaged on a fluorescent screen within a solid angle of 2pi. The resulting images represent atomic rows and planes and can therefore reveal the near-surface atomic geometry. An image obtained from a copper crystallite is presented and compared with a projection of atoms of the f.c.c. lattice on to a spherical screen. The method has potential uses in research dealing with surface structures.