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# Through-focus scanning optical microscopy

## Appears In

                        - NIST Tile

NIST’s Ravi Attota uses a simple optical microscope and a technique called through-focus scanning optical microscopy to measure the dimensions of things at the nanoscale. Instead of trying to get one photo that’s clear and crisp, we take multiple blurry images, each at a different focus, to build a 3D view of the tiny objects. This particular image is of a silicon line on a silicon substrate.

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