ATOM CLUSTERS - NEW APPLICATIONS OF HIGH-VOLTAGE ELECTRON-MICROSCOPY MICROLABORATORY TO MATERIALS SCIENCE

High-voltage electron microscopy has been improved from a powerful tool for both characterization and identification of the materials to an indispensable "micro-laboratory", and various specimen treatments have been carried out directly and precisely at the atomic scale to give new functional behavior to the materials. In the present paper, the high-voltage electron microscopy "micro-laboratory" is applied to studying atom clusters which behave just like new materials, and the magic size, at which the material behavior markedly changes, is determined on various materials. Furthermore, the atomistic structure and behavior of various atom clusters are discussed based on the experimental results.