“What if there was a camera precise and fast enough that we can take snapshots or make movies of atoms moving and chemical reactions as they’re happening?” physics graduate student Jenni Portman said. “We would be able to understand what causes materials to behave in a certain way or why certain reactions work the way they do.”

Portman is a student in the group of MSU professor Duxbury, whose group is collaborating with associate professor of physics and astronomy Chong-Yu Ruan and his team to create a microscope powerful enough to study complex chemical interactions.

High-resolution electron microscopes are powerful but can’t capture molecule movement, MSU associate professor of physics and astronomy Chong-Yu Ruan explained. This makes it difficult to study the relationship between cell structure and function, he added.

The technology his team is developing is electron-based imaging technology in femtoseconds, or one millionth of a billionth of a second.

Today’s microscopes don’t operate that quickly, said physics and astronomy professor Martin Berz, whose group also collaborates with Ruan’s team on the microscope.

“When you want to study molecules moving around and binding, it happens at high speeds in the frames you look at,” Berz said. “You’re so zoomed in, and (molecule movement is) happening so fast. But this microscope can capture very fast processes with a very quick exposure time. You can see molecules bind together without any blurring; a super sharp image.”

The microscope can help scientists and engineers build better electronics that take up less space and use less power, because they can tailor their microscopic properties to do whatever they want, according to Portman.

“We could better understand all the complex chemical interactions that go on inside our bodies every day, and maybe find ways to prevent whenever these interactions don’t go they way they’re supposed to,” Portman said.

A device that allows scientists to study molecular behavior will be applicable to students and researchers in the fields of physics, engineering, medicine, chemistry and biological sciences, she said.

“If we can build it and a company can sell it, it will be incredibly versatile,” Ruan said.

The microscope research is being funded from a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, but the work is ongoing, Ruan said.

Meanwhile, students already are learning more, because of the new technology, Berz said.

“(Students) can basically study anything they might find in a chemistry textbook,” Berz said. “They can see things like chemical bonds in action. The can observe it happen live.”