Post by Eyring Materials Center

The year 2020 marked the Golden Anniversary of the establishment of Arizona State University as a world leader in high-resolution # electron microscopy. John Cowley was recruited to ASU in 1970 when he took up his appointment as the first Galvin Professor of Physics. One of the earliest instrument acquisitions after Cowley’s arrival was the JEOL JEM100B, the first commercial electron microscope capable of providing images of atoms in crystalline materials. Cowley’s first post-doc Sumio Iijima, who famously later went on to discover the carbon nanotube, and many others used this instrument to great success in ensuing years to discover previously unknown details of crystal structures and defects. The photo below shows Cowley and Iijima at the control desk of the 100B, and the inset shows an iconic image of a complex niobium oxide crystal that was recorded by Iijima using the scope. The long-since-retired 100B is still preserved in the Wheatley Outreach Room within the Eyring Materials Center, and part of it has been cut away so that visitors can view some of its critical operational components. The right-hand side photo shows Karl Weiss pausing next to the microscope in 2020. #Research #ASU #microscopy #TEM #atoms #engineering #semiconductors #crystals #physics