In the era of nanoscience, the size of particles to be investigated gets smaller and smaller but the traditional techniques used for characterization of materials are becoming inadequate. Electron Crystallography (EC) is a powerful and sometimes the unique tool to study crystal structure and properties of nano sized materials. It is a broad branch of science comprising both academic research and industrial needs. Materials studied using EC methods vary in size and nature, ranging from inorganic nanoparticles to biological samples.
Exciting developments such as aberration correctors, dedicated specimen-holders, highly sensitive cameras, new data acquisition techniques, automated routines for data collection and new data processing softwares allow electron crystallographers to solve crystal structures from nano particles at atomic resolution.

The Course intends to review the structure solution using electron crystallography methods as well as novel applications; it will be divided into three major fields:

1) provide a strong background on crystallography in general and electron crystallography in particular
2) introduce students to upcoming techniques for data acquisition and data processing as well as to the state-of-the-art electron microscopy
3) cover different approaches for structure solution and derive structure-property relationship

The emphasis will be given on the following subjects: structural and charge density studies of organic molecules like pigments and drugs, protein structures, complicated inorganic and metallic materials in the amorphous, nano-, meso- and quasi-crystalline state, minerals and magnetic materials.