Model explains how electron beams make nanotubes visible

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Alireza Nojeh (front) and Fabian Pease use a scanning electron microscope to view carbon nanotubes.
Alireza Nojeh (front) and Fabian Pease use a scanning electron microscope to view carbon nanotubes.

Scanning electron microscopes are the workhorses of imaging structures on the scale of billionths of a meter. Typically, they work by shooting a beam of electrons at the specimen and then detecting newly generated electrons as they bounce off and scatter. But carbon nanotubes, essentially rolled up sheets of chicken wire a billionth of a meter in diameter, are so narrow and their sides so thin, that scientists haven't properly understood why they are visible using a scanning electron microscope, or SEM.


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