Ultrahigh-vacuum transmission electron microscopy (UHVTEM) has become increasingly popular for the direct observation of nanostructures having clean surfaces, since industrial requirements to make and research nano-scale materials have been rapidly growing for quantum or nanoscale electronic devices. Since we have first developed high resolution UHVTEM in 1986, the UHVTEMs have been evolved with steady advances such as UHV compatible goniometer, field emission gun or etc. Furthermore, the UHVTEM started to combine analytical capabilities such as energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer, in-column type energy filter and etc., and to combine STM (scanning tunneling microscope). The UHV technology is essential for the analysis, because the portion of contaminant in a nano-scale specimen increases as the size of the specimen goes down. This paper reports the results of gold nanostructures by recently the developed UHVTEM.Figure 1 shows recently developed UHVTEM with Schottky type field emission gun.
