Acquisition of High-Resolution Electron Microscopy Facilities for The Johns Hopkins University

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9512438 Veblen This Academic Research Infrastructure grant provides $680,000 as one-half support of the costs of acquiring and installing a new high-resolution transmission electron microscope with a field emission gun (FEG-HRTEM) at The Johns Hopkins University. Matching funds will be provided through the Keck Foundation. Funding is split between the Earth Sciences Facilities and Instrumentation Program's ARI allocation and Engineering's Civil and Mechanical System's ARI allocation in amounts of $570,000 and $110,000, respectively. The need for HRTEM facilities at Johns Hopkins University extends beyond traditional departmental and divisional boundaries and includes a broad range of engineering and scientific disciplines. This microscope will be the keystone of an interdepartmental/interdivisional electron microscopy laboratory that will benefit Hopkins researchers in biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, earth and planetary sciences, environmental engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics. Specifically, a 300 keV atomic resolution TEM with a field emission gun capable of point-to-point characterization of material at the nanoscale (0.2 nm) and equipped with a high current probe capable of extremely high resolution (~ 1 nm) chemical analyses will be acquired and installed. Development of many advanced materials and the advancement of fundamental understanding in environmental chemistry, geochemistry, and physics are occurring at nanometer or even atomic dimensions and research in these areas is highly dependent on the ability to observe and characterize solids at these length scales. Examples of specific research projects that will be conducted in the new electron microscopy facility are processing and characterization of nanoscale materials, dislocation core structures in intermetallic alloys, environmental chemistry (addressing sorption of toxic metals and other pollutants on soil minerals), development and characterization of rare-earth magnetostictive materials, nanoscale observations of porous semiconductors, the identification of failure mechanisms in materials with applications to manufacturing processes, and investigations in crystal chemistry and geochemistry. ***