In recent years electron microscopy has been used to image surfaces in both the transmission and reflection modes by many research groups. Some of this work has been performed under ultra high vacuum conditions (UHV) and apparent surface reconstructions observed. The level of resolution generally has been at least an order of magnitude worse than is necessary to visualize atoms directly and therefore the detailed atomic rearrangements of the surface are not known. The present author has achieved atomic level resolution under normal vacuum conditions of various Au surfaces. Unfortunately these samples were exposed to atmosphere and could not be cleaned in a standard high resolution electron microscope. The result obtained surfaces which were impurity stabilized and reveal the bulk lattice (1x1) type surface structures also encountered by other surface physics techniques under impure or overlayer contaminant conditions. It was therefore decided to study a system where exposure to air was unimportant by using a oxygen saturated structure, Ag2O, and seeking to find surface reconstructions, which will now be described.
