Acquisition of a Field-Emission Energy-Filtering Transmission Electron Microscope for Materials Research

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9871119-GibsonA state-of-the-art field-emission gun transmission electron micro-scope (FEG/TEM) which is capable of energy filtering the diffracted electrons and which will be used for an integrated research program at the University of Illinois will be acquired using funds from the Major Research Instrumentation program. This instrument will be lo-cated in the Center for Microanalysis of Materials (CMM) located in the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory (FSMRL); an interdisciplinary research department focused on the fields of Materials Science and Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Chemistry, and Biomaterials. The FSMRL has a rich tradition of enabling cross-disciplinary research involving about 60 faculty research groups distributed among seven academic departments. Access to an FEG/TEM is critical to the success of several very specific projects at the University of Illinois. Projects on the synthesis of catalytic materials, epitaxial nanostructures in semiconductors, the chemistry and structure of interfaces, the structure of ball-milled amorphous solids, and corrosion will take advantage of the unique capabilities of the proposed instrument for Z-contrast imaging, nanoscale chemical analysis, energy filtering, and electron holography. The electron holographic capabilities of the proposed FEG/TEM and its ability to image the electrostatic fields associated with ferroelectric domains will enable studies of the microstructure, domain structure, and domain switching of ferroelectric thin films. The energy filtering and STEM capabilities of the proposed instrument are critical to a project on imaging of biological structures such as chromatin fibers. In addition to the research projects, the instrument will be used for many other graduate student research projects in the context of its operation by the CMM. This mode of operation will have a major impact on the graduate research and educa-tional programs as indicated by the fact that more than 157 graduate students have been educated in the use of TEM methods in the past five years and more than 469 have used the CMM TEMs during that same period. %%%The field-emission gun transmission electron micro-scope that will be acquired using funds from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation program will be integrated into the CMM and will see extensive annual use by an estimated 80 users of the TEM facilities of the CMM. This facility supports projects that involve many faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois. ***