The first discussion of obtaining an image of a surface using atoms was by King and Bigas, who showed that an image of a surface can be obtained by heating a sample and monitoring the atoms that evaporate from the surface. King and Bigas suggest that it could be possible to form an image by scattering atoms from the surface, though it was some time before this was demonstrated.
The idea of imaging with atoms instead of light was subsequently widely discussed in the literature.
The initial approach to producing a helium microscope assumed that a focussing element is required to produce a high intensity beam of atoms. An early approach was to develop an atomic mirror, which is appealing since the focussing is independent of the velocity distribution of the incoming atoms. However the material challenges to produce an appropriate surface that is macroscopically curved and defect free on an atomic length-scale has proved too challenging so far.
King and Bigas, showed that an image of a surface can be obtained by heating a sample and monitoring the atoms that evaporate from the surface. King and Bigas suggest it could be possible to form an image by scattering atoms from the surface, though it was some time before it was demonstrated.
Metastable atoms are atoms that have been excited out of the ground state, but remain in an excited state for a significant period of time. Microscopy using metastable atoms has been shown to be possible, where the metastable atoms release stored internal energy into the surface, releasing electrons that provide information on the electronic structure. The kinetic energy of the metastable atoms means that only the surface electronic structure is probed, but the large energy exchange when the metastable atom de-excites will still perturb delicate sample surfaces.
The first two-dimensional neutral helium images were obtained using a conventional Fresnel zone plate by Koch et al. in a transmission setup. Helium will not pass through a solid material, therefore a large change in the measured signal is obtained when a sample is placed between the source and the detector. By maximising the contrast and using transmission mode, it was much easier to verify the feasibility of the technique. However, the setup used by Koch et al. with a zone plate did not produce a high enough signal to observe the reflected signal from the surface at the time. Nevertheless, the focussing obtained with a zone plate offers the potential for improved resolution due to the small beam spot size in the future. Research into neutral helium microscopes that use a Fresnel zone plate is an active area in Holst’s group at the University of Bergen.
Since using a zone plate proved difficult due to the low focussing efficiency, alternative methods for forming a helium beam to produce images with atoms were explored.
Recent efforts have avoided focussing elements and instead are directly collimating a beam with a pinhole. The lack of atom optics means that the beam width will be significantly larger than in an electron microscope. The first published demonstration of a two-dimensional image formed by helium reflecting from the surface was by Witham and Sánchez, who used a pinhole to form the helium beam. A small pinhole is placed very close to a sample and the helium scattered into a large solid angle is fed to a detector. Images are collected by moving the sample around underneath the beam and monitoring how the scattered helium flux changes.
In parallel to the work by Witham and Sánchez, a proof of concept machine named the scanning helium microscope (SHeM) was being developed in Cambridge in collaboration with Dastoor's group from the University of Newcastle. The approach that was adopted was to simplify previous attempts that involved an atom mirror by using a pinhole, but to still use a conventional helium source to produce a high quality beam. Other differences from the Witham and Sánchez design include using a larger sample to pinhole distance, so that a larger variety of samples can be used and to use a smaller collection solid angle, so that it may be possible to observe more subtle contrast. These changes also reduced the total flux in the detector meaning that higher efficiency detectors are required (which in itself is an active area of research.