Beneath the Surface
This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.
Western University researcher, Peter J. Schultz, built the first positronic beam device in Canada and used it to advance the study of solid surfaces and thin films in the 1980s and 1990s. This technology allows aviation inspectors to detect damage to material at an atomic level before any visible damage is apparent.