IOF NANO

Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT) - IOF NANO

Electron Microscopy for Materials Science (EMAT)

The EMAT research group is an electron microscopy center for materials research specialized in:

  • structure of nanomaterials and interfaces through electron diffraction (ED), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning TEM (STEM) imaging
  • electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), energy filtered TEM (EFTEM) and energy-dipersive X-ray (EDX) analysis
  • three dimensional imaging through electron tomography and FIB/SEM slice-and-view method
  • TEM specimen preparation

EMAT possesses several top instruments as well as a set of conventional, albeit versatile, transmission electron microscopes, including:

  • Two FEI Titan3 aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes delivering 0.05 nm resolution in TEM mode, 0.08 nm in STEM mode, an energy resolution in EELS better than 150 meV and offering a highly efficient EDX system, ideal to map the atomic positions of both heavy and light atoms
  • FEI Tecnai G2 electron microscopes, equipped with an EDX detector, tomography setup, holders for the in situ heating/cooling experiments and PI 95 PicoIndenter TEM holder (Hysitron.Inc) dedicated for in-situ TEM nano-mechanical testing, ASTAR attachment for the orientational mapping and precession electron diffraction
  • JEOL 3000F - a multipurpose device aimed at high resolution TEM and STEM imaging, electron tomography, EELS and EFTEM studies and compositional EDX mapping
  • Philips CM20 oriented to conventional TEM imaging, electron crystallography, EDX analysis, in situ heating/cooling experiments, in situ straining experiments
  • FEI Quanta FEG 250 - a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a spatial resolution of ~1 nm in a saturated water vapour environment (The ability to operate the microscope at environmental conditions eliminates the need for conductive coating and enables studying surfaces of soft matter. Analytical information can be obtained using the EDX or wave-dispersive X-ray (WDX) systems)
  • FEI Helios Nanolab 650 - a versatile DualBeam system containing a Ga+ focused ion beam (FIB) together with a FEG SEM and EDX detector (The main purpose of the Helios 650 is high quality site-specific TEM specimen preparation with in-situ liftout)

The research infrastructure at EMAT also includes extended facilities for TEM specimen preparations, also in O2 and H2O-free atmosphere, powder X-ray diffraction laboratory and chemical laboratory.