The Lost Treasure of Electron Microscopy
Unpublished images should be brought to light to aid science communication and speed up discovery.
By Valentine Ananikov, 2025-10-16T13:30:00+01:00. Unpublished images should be brought to light to aid science communication and speed up discovery.
Source: NM Ivanova, AS Kashin and VP Ananikov, Chemistry, 2025, 7, 160.
Many striking images were hidden in the ‘lost’ electron microscope data, including these crystals of sodium chloride.
A few years ago, I was preparing a popular lecture for a wide audience. My goal was simple: to show the beauty of chemistry through images taken with an electron microscope.
I remembered that in one of our projects, we had recorded truly stunning pictures of a metal-on-carbon catalyst with striking variations in morphology. The surface looked like a fantastic landscape from another planet – craters, valleys and mountains frozen in nanoscale.
I thought this would be perfect material for my talk.
Author's summary: Unpublished electron microscopy images can aid science communication.