Dr. Sarah Haigh
Reader in Materials Characterisation: structure and properties of nanomaterials
I’ve done a lot of drawing but I don't think I'd be able to be an artist as it doesn't use the neurotic analytical number side of my brain; I like to have an answer. Images tell a story and I guess that fits in with me wanting to take pictures in order to understand things. Electron microscopy brings together a strong scientific bent and an aesthetic sense. I was inspired by a fantastic professor at Oxford who called it ‘nano-exploring’. At Manchester we use high resolution transmission electron microscope imaging (TEM) and spectroscopic analysis which makes us explorers of the nano-world, a world you couldn’t possibly see with light, but we can with electrons.
Even a millimetre sized block of material contains billions and billions of atoms. However, in order to look at the atoms we have to make the sample very thin, around 100 atoms or less, and that's difficult. One benefit of 2D materials to a microscopist is that they’re inherently just a few atoms thick (or thin) when looking through a sheet. This allows us to take beautiful images, revealing the relationships between the atoms’ positions and how the material functions.