A brief review of past work on the continuous observation of thin-film growth processes through electron microscopy is followed by a discussion of the advantages and limitations of the in-situ technique. Experimental measures of improving the applicability of in-situ observations, specifically the improvement of vacuum conditions at the site of the electron microscope specimen, are described. The heterogenous nucleation of silver from the vapor phase on amorphous carbon is used to illustrate the feasibility of quantitative nucleation experiments inside an electron microscope. Absolute nucleation rates were measured directly and through detailed analysis of the nucleus size distribution function. It was found that the nucleation rate is time-dependent and corresponding activation energies for adsorption and surface diffusion assume reasonable values.
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H. Poppa (1965) studied this question.