It is often said that: “…a picture is worth a thousand words… ” This can be certainly true for images from an Atomic Force Microscope.

Although we often know that nanoparticles exist and we have a mental picture of what they look like, it is often helpful to be able to “see” the particles to verify that they are morphologically what we imagine they are. When the particles are much less than a micron in diameter, they cannot be directly visualized with an optical microscope. At best, sub micron particles appear as “diffraction spots” in an optical microscope. It is possible to visualize nanoparticles with SEM or TEM.