Electron and Photon Detection for Microscopies

Seeing small things takes bright lights and great optics. But you still have to see something. This talk will discuss detectors for electron and X-ray microscopies: how they work, what are they challenges, and where are the opportunities. The competition is intense: the human eye has ~108 ‘pixels’ and a dynamic range of ~104 (and has a direct connection to a built-in neural processor). No camera today can match these specs (although we are getting close). The use of silicon as a sensing medium, together with the dramatic advances in microelectronics (“Moore’s law”) has transformed how we record images. Is detection a solved problem?