Are you thinking of scanning electron microscopes? Those will give you surface topology - the electrons don't pass through the sample, but instead backscatter.

Are you thinking of scanning electron microscopes? Those will give you surface topology - the electrons don't pass through the sample, but instead backscatter. Platinum and gold are commonly sputtered on top to help with the conductivity. With Cryo-EM, it's a transmission electron microscope. So the sample is frozen into a very thin (~30ish nm if you're lucky) sheet of vitreous ice, and then shot with electrons. The electrons pass all the way through the ice and the sample, and you get a projection image of whatever was in that ice.