Here's some amazing footage of Carbon atoms moving around. The movie was captured with a Transmission Electron Microscope called TEAM 0.5. This microscope (cross-sectioned on the left) uses special lenses to correct for chromatic and spherical aberration, one of the limitations of a typical TEM. This is one of the key features that allows researchers to clearly view atoms and atomic lattices.From the Article:
"Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), working with TEAM 0.5, the world's most powerful transmission electron microscope, have made a movie that shows in real-time carbon atoms repositioning themselves around the edge of a hole that was punched into a graphene sheet. Viewers can observe how chemical bonds break and form as the suddenly volatile atoms are driven to find a stable configuration. This is the first ever live recording of the dynamics of carbon atoms in graphene."
