Michael A. O'Keefe

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Michael A. O'Keefe (b. September 8, 1942, in East Melbourne, Australia) is a physicist famous for his work in materials science and electron microscopy. He is perhaps best known for his production of the seminal computer code for the modeling of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images.

He designed and developed the one-Ångström microscope (OÅM) for the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and was successful in breaking the "one-Ångström barrier" to resolution by a combination of hardware and software correction of microscope aberrations. He produced the first HRTEM images to show carbon atoms separated by less than one Ångström in diamond (0.89 Å) and silicon atoms in crystalline silicon (0.78 Å). His OÅM is the only HRTEM currently able to image the smallest metal atoms (lithium) in lithium battery materials.