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Updated: May 9, 2026

Picometer-Precision Atomic Position Tracking through Electron Microscopy
Published on: July 3, 2021
Tracking 3D picometer-scale motions of single nanoparticles with high-energy electron probes
Naoki Ogawa1, Kentaro Hoshisashi, Hiroshi Sekiguchi
1JST/CREST SASAKI-team, Japan Science and Technology Agency, The University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa City, Chiba, Japan.
Abstract:
We observed the high-speed anisotropic motion of an individual gold nanoparticle in 3D at the picometer scale using a high-energy electron probe. Diffracted electron tracking (DET) using the electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) patterns of labeled nanoparticles under wet-SEM allowed us to super-accurately measure the time-resolved 3D motion of individual nanoparticles in aqueous conditions. The highly precise DET data corresponded to the 3D anisotropic log-normal Gaussian distributions over time at the millisecond scale.
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