Course Identification

a course or equivalent qualifications in mathematics for chemists

The course will provide a broad survey to microscopy and micro-analysis relevant to chemists and biologists. Lectures will cover fundamentals, introduce the major techniques, and present salient examples in depth.

Modern microscopy involves more than pretty pictures. An image is a spatial map of some material property, be it refractive index, electron density, absorption coefficient, etc. 

Syllabus:

History and milestones (1)

Light microscopy (4):

• Basic optics
• Contrast mechanisms & confocal microscopy
• Resolution and dynamics
• Super-resolution imaging

Electron microscopy (5):

• transmission and scanning transmission EM
• scanning EM
• spectroscopy in the microscope
• tomography and single particle analysis for molecular structure
• diffraction and crystallography in the microscope

Image processing for microscopy (2):

• 2D image manipulations, filters in real and Fourier space
• 3D reconstruction and processing

Scanning probe microscopes (1)

Additional topics (1)

Upon successful completion of the course the students will:

Gain a foundation to understand recent advances and to evaluate results critically.

Understand the basis for contrast generation, how that impacts interpretation, and how to select or combine methods to answer research questions.