Materials that exhibit magnetism, superconductivity (the ability of electrons to travel without resistance across a material), and ferroelectricity (important for capacitors and used, for example, in medical ultrasound machines, infrared cameras and fire sensors) are the subject of significant scientific and technological research. These properties can depend strongly on the roughness of interfaces between layers as well as the thickness of these layers (often each a mere ~2.5 nanometers, or 1/16,000th the width of a human hair, thick); as such, the ability to characterize these layers at high-resolution is important. Yet few characterization techniques exist that have the ability to characterize the structure and uniformity of such complex structures.
