MRI: Acquisition of a Cryo Field Emission Transmission Electron Microscope

纽约州立大学环境科学与林业学院(ESF)获奖，以获得具有低温能力和使用能谱(EDS)进行元素分析的场发射扫描/透射电子显微镜(FES/TEM)。这台仪器将取代ESF共享核心的北卡罗来纳州布朗超结构研究中心有30年历史的失灵的透射电子显微镜。该项目是ESF、纽约州立大学北部医科大学(UMU)和锡拉丘兹大学(SU)三所相邻大学的联合伙伴关系。这一新的FES/TEMs将为这些机构提供纽约市中心目前没有的能力，并将扩大这些机构的教职员工和研究生的研究能力，并为竞争性的校外资金提供支持。ESF的北卡罗来纳州布朗中心提供了一个独特的学术项目，这是一个位于纽约市中心的“显微镜辅修课程”，有研究生和本科生的课程，以及关于显微镜理论和应用的全面正式培训，例如：样品准备、仪器和结果解释。此次收购将增强这些学术成果。除了其学术项目外，该中心还定期向社区和工业团体提供光学、扫描和透射显微镜演示，包括外联活动和演示。该项目将支持这些活动。新的FES/TEMs将促进互动、在线高中和客户访问，并有可能通过在线演示提供互动信息。新的透射电子显微镜使ESF的石棉测试实验室成为唯一为石棉修复行业提供相位对比和透射电子显微镜石棉分析的本地实验室。该项目的社会效益包括提高学生和公众的科学素养，为学生提供就业技能，为研究提供潜力，这些研究可能产生广泛的影响，如用于疾病预防的新疫苗或药物输送系统，以及新纳米材料的开发对环境和工业的影响。获得这种具有低温能力的场发射扫描和传输(S/透射电子显微镜)将使欧洲科学基金会、苏州大学和密歇根大学的广泛研究小组取得进展。其中，在ESF上：更好地跟踪环境条件导致的鱼耳石中可测量的化学变化和超微结构，无机和有机纳米颗粒的化学，在靶向药物输送中的潜在用途，影响林木和木材产品的真菌对木材细胞壁降解的研究，人类和植物疾病的昆虫媒介研究；在苏州：这台显微镜将测定半导体量子棒和合金纳米颗粒的尺寸和形状，对合金纳米颗粒中原子衍生晶格平面和成分梯度的原子成像和元素检验，对异质纳米颗粒成分变化的S/透射电子显微镜和能谱分析，对量子点中的堆叠缺陷和延伸缺陷的S/透射电子显微镜，以及对蛋白质和DNA修饰纳米材料的分析；在密歇根大学，拟建的场发射电子源具有优异的亮度和光束相干性，将以比现在用旧机器所能达到的更高的分辨率产生冷冻水合生物大分子的高对比度图像。这样的数据将使ATP分子马达的三维结构确定成为可能。高分辨率的4K摄像机将使高通量情况成为可能，特别是当收集数千张图像用于单粒子或三维重建时。电动测角仪将能够对动物或植物细胞的冷冻切片进行断层或倾斜重建，揭示细胞器、病毒或纳米颗粒以及大药物分子的内部结构和位置，而不会出现化学固定造成的令人困惑的假象。该显微镜的特点是2纳米分辨率，用于检查未染色的样品、细菌、病毒、蛋白质、纳米颗粒，同时绘制和定位元素。新一代S/透射电子显微镜将配备场发射枪、低温工作台、能量色散X射线光谱仪、4K电荷耦合器件数码相机、电子衍射、层析成像软件和远程访问。该仪器允许进入蛋白质折叠、分子马达、材料研究、单粒子三维重建、冷冻成像和元素分析等领域。具有这些选项的FES/TEM将能够可视化和重建亚细胞颗粒、药物输送工具、识别生物样品和纳米颗粒中的元素，以及通过冷冻切片定位药物在目标组织中；所有这些都是目前的仪器无法实现的。

An award is made to State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) to acquire a field emission scanning/transmission electron microscope (FES/TEM) with cryo-capabilities and elemental analysis using Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS). This instrument will replace a 30 year-old failing TEM in the shared-core N.C. Brown Center for Ultrastructure Studies at ESF. This project is a joint partnership of three adjacent universities, ESF, SUNY Upstate Medical University (UMU) and Syracuse University (SU). This new FES/TEM will provide these institutions with capabilities that are currently not available in central New York, and will expand the research capabilities of faculty and graduate students at these institutions, and provide support for competitive extramural funding. The NC Brown Center at ESF offers a unique academic program, a "Microscopy Minor" in central New York with graduate and undergraduate coursework and comprehensive formal training in the theory and application of microscopy such as: sample preparation, instrumentation and interpretation of results. This acquisition will enhance these academic offerings. In addition to its academic program, the Center routinely provides light, scanning and transmission microscopy demonstrations to community and industrial groups including outreach activities and demonstrations. This project will support such activities. The new FES/TEM will facilitate interactive, online high school and client access, with potential to provide interactive information with online demos. The new TEM enables the asbestos testing lab at ESF to become the only local laboratory to offer both phase contrast and TEM asbestos analysis for the asbestos remediation industry. Societal benefits of the project include raising scientific literacy of students and the public, providing students with skills for employment, providing potential for research that can result in wide-ranging impacts such as new vaccines or drug delivery systems for disease prevention, as well as environmental and industrial impact from the development of novel nanomaterials.Acquisition of this cryo-capable field emission scanning and transmission (S/TEM) will permit advances within a wide-range of research groups at ESF, SU and UMU. Among these, at ESF: better tracking of measurable chemical changes and ultrastructure in fish ear stones due to environmental conditions, chemistry of both inorganic and organic nanoparticles, with potential use in targeted drug delivery, studies of wood cell wall degradation by fungi affecting forest trees and wood products, studies of insect vectors of human and plant diseases; at SU: this microscope will determine size and shape of semi-conductive quantum rods and alloy nanoparticles, atomic imaging and elemental inspection of atomic derived lattice planes and compositional gradients in alloy nanoparticles, S/TEM and EDS analysis of compositional changes in hetero-structured nanoparticles, S/TEM of stacking faults and extended defects in quantum dots, and analysis of protein and DNA modified nanomaterials; and at UMU: the proposed field emission electron source with its superior brilliance and beam coherence will produce high contrast images from frozen hydrated biological macromolecules at much better resolution than is now possible with the older machine. Such data will allow 3-D structure determination of ATP molecular motors. The high resolution 4K CCD camera will enable high throughput situations especially when thousands of images are collected for single particle or 3Dimensional reconstruction. The motorized goniometer will enable generating tomographic or tilted reconstructions of cryo sections of animal or plant cells revealing the internal structure and location of organelles, virus or nanoparticles as well as large drug molecules without the confusing artifacts created by chemical fixation. This microscope features a 2 nanometer resolution for examination of unstained samples, bacteria, viruses, proteins, nanoparticles and at the same time, map and locate elements. This new generation S/TEM will have a field emission gun, cryo-capable stage, Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer, 4K CCD digital camera, electron diffraction, tomography software, and remote access. This instrument permits entry into the fields of protein folding, molecular motors, materials research, 3D reconstruction of single particles, cryo-imaging and elemental analysis. The FES/TEM with these options will enable visualization and reconstruction of subcellular particles, drug delivery vehicles, identification of elements in biological samples and nanoparticles, and localization of pharmaceuticals in target tissues by cryo-sections; all things that cannot be achieved with present instrumentation.