I-Corps: Soft Analytic Imaging

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The possibility of imaging water-based systems at high spatial and chemical resolution in a relatively short amount of time would provide unique and critical information for a large number of research focused entities and industries. The objective of this I-Corps project is to determine market need for a new approach enabling the 3D nanoscale imaging of liquids using atom probe tomography (APT), a technique traditionally used for hard materials (metals, semiconductors and oxides).The high pay-off of the proposed approach resides in the versatility of the method that will allow not only water-based systems to be studied, but will also be applicable to water/metal and hard/soft interfaces. This impacts a large number of research areas relevant to the development of biological materials (cells and virus chemistry and structures, doping), medical area (contamination of cells by heavy metals, nanoparticles), chemical processes (nanoparticle chemistry, surface chemistry, nanoscale synthesis for catalytic applications, drug synthesis), and energy materials (such as structural materials for power plants, battery materials, and organic electronic devices). The proposed technology combines the technique of atom probe tomography that provides three-dimensional atom by atom reconstruction of materials with vitrification methods traditionally used for the imaging of biological samples. The device will enable cryo-freezing and transfer into the atom probe tomography instrument opening the analytical imaging technique to novel applications. The proposed technology for water-based samples would expand the imaging possibility of atom probe tomography to new areas and thus has the potential to greatly expand the user base for this imaging technique.