EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Electron microscopes have much higher resolving power – the most powerful allow us to distinguish individual atoms.

Detailed explanation-2: -A scanning transmission electron microscope has achieved better than 50 pm resolution in annular dark-field imaging mode and magnifications of up to about 10, 000, 000× whereas most light microscopes are limited by diffraction to about 200 nm resolution and useful magnifications below 2000×.

Detailed explanation-3: -The TEM offers higher resolution (  0.2 nm) than SEM, and can even reach near-atomic resolution for HR-TEM. Additionally, TEM provides information on both element and compound structure (i.e., crystal structure, elemental information and morphology).

Detailed explanation-4: -The magnifications that TEMs offer are also much higher compared to SEMs. TEM users can magnify their samples by more than 50 million times, while for the SEM, this is limited to 1–2 million times.

Detailed explanation-5: -The microscope that can achieve the highest magnification and greatest resolution is the electron microscope, which is an optical instrument that is designed to enable us to see microscopic details down to the atomic scale (check also atom microscopy).