Transmission Electron Microscopy: Essential Support for Materials Synthesis

先进的功能材料对于开发许多将塑造我们未来的新技术和设备至关重要。它们将定义我们创造更清洁、更便宜、更安全和更高效的设计、生产、制造流程和技术的能力。因此，它们将有助于解决当今世界在能源、医疗保健和医药、减少污染、食品生产和制造业等领域面临的许多最紧迫的问题。然而，开发这些新材料的核心是正确理解在原子和/或分子水平上支撑其结构和性质的科学。这只能通过战略性地提供最先进的分析设施来实现。化学系将与剑桥高级成像中心(CAIC)合作，在剑桥大学建立一个虚拟电子显微镜(EM)中心，提供独特的“材料合成”。能力将包括支持多个研究学科的定制设施。带头的将是一台200千伏的场发射枪扫描透射电子显微镜(FEG-S/TEM)，它具有出色的高分辨率和STEM成像能力，能量色散X射线光谱仪(EDX)和电子能量损失谱(EELS)可以阐明化学成分和成键，能够对多个图像进行层析重建以实现复杂材料的3D可视化，以及一个低温保温器，使得不仅能够分析所谓的“硬”材料，而且能够研究“软”材料。这个由电子显微镜主导的中心将构成大学范围内EM网络的一部分，在这个网络中，每个中心维护和开发适用于不同专业的仪器，并在它们之间为我们在剑桥的研究组合创造必要的设备容量。硬材料通常是高度结晶的，可以表现出长程有序；然而，无序往往对它们的功能至关重要。它们包括金属和金属氧化物、沸石和金属有机骨架等多孔材料、半导体和陶瓷。同时，“软”材料包括自组装金属聚合物、聚合物胶束、纳米凝胶和生物启发或生物材料。这些都是非常不同的分析挑战，意味着仪器通常是为处理一种或另一种样品类型而设计的。然而，最新一代的TEM有能力审问这两种不同类型的样品。这一发展为化学系等部门提供了一种跨越式的变化，化学系拥有合成一系列硬材料和软材料的研究小组，可以接近先进材料的表征。现在有可能开发一个面向如此广泛的研究人群的新兴市场中心。这对最先进的研究有两个改变游戏规则的影响。首先，拟议的工具将带头建立一个EM中心，为硬性和软性先进材料社区之间的思想和技术交流提供一个独特的机会，不仅在学术界，而且在工业领域。其次，它将为广泛的研究小组提供基本的能力建设，确保研究人员的日常动手接触和比目前可能的更有效地对样品进行分类的能力，从而提高对更专门的仪器进行更详细分析的有效性。拟议的化学/CAIC中心的广泛能力意味着可以审问与广泛领域相关的先进材料。我们预计，新数据将对一系列领域的研究产生影响，包括航空航天、汽车、电池和能源技术、餐饮和食品生产、通信、钻井和炼油、药物输送、电子、医疗保健、卫生、ICT、石化、制药、再生工程和传感。

Advanced functional materials are fundamentally important to developing many new technologies and devices that will shape our future. They will define our ability to create cleaner, cheaper, safer and more efficient design, production, manufacturing processes, and technologies. As such, they will be instrumental in addressing many of the most pressing problems facing the world today in areas such as energy, healthcare and medicine, pollution abatement, food production, and manufacturing. Yet central to the development of these new materials is a proper understanding of the science that underpins both their structures and properties at the atomic and/or molecular level. This can only be achieved through the strategic provision of the most state-of-the-art analytical facilities.In conjunction with the Cambridge Advanced Imaging Centre (CAIC), the Chemistry Department will establish a virtual electron microscopy (EM) hub in the University that offers a unique emphasis on "materials synthesis". Capabilities will comprise bespoke facilities supporting multiple research disciplines. Spearheading this hub will be a 200 kV field emission gun-scanning transmission electron microscope (FEG-S/TEM) with excellent high resolution and STEM imaging capabilities, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) for elucidating chemical composition and bonding, the ability to tomographically reconstruct multiple images to allow the 3D visualization of complex materials and a cryo-holder to enable the analysis not just of so-called 'hard' materials but also the study of 'soft' materials. This TEM-led hub will form one part of a University-wide EM network in which each hub maintains and develops the instrumentation for different specialties and, between them, create the necessary equipment capacity for our research portfolio across Cambridge.'Hard' materials are often highly crystalline and can exhibit long-range order; yet disorder is often critical to their function. They include metals and metal oxides, porous materials such as zeolites and metal-organic frameworks, semiconductors and ceramics. Meanwhile, 'soft' materials include self-assembled metallopolymers, polymer micelles, nano-gels and bio-inspired or biological materials. These present very different analytical challenges and mean that instruments are often designed to cope with one or other sample type. However, the latest generation of TEMs has the ability to interrogate both of these diverse types of sample. This development offers a step-change in the way that the Departments such as Chemistry, which has research groups synthesizing a broad array of hard and soft materials, can approach Advanced Materials characterization. It is now possible to develop an EM hub that caters for such a broad research demographic. This has two game-changing effects on state-of-the-art research. First, the proposed instrument will spearhead an EM hub that will offer a unique opportunity for the cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques between the hard and soft Advanced Materials communities not only in academia, but also in industry. Second, it will provide essential capacity-building to a broad range of research groups, ensuring routine hands-on access to researchers and the ability to triage samples more efficiently than is currently possible, so enhancing the effectiveness with which more detailed analysis on much more specialized instrumentation can be undertaken.The wide-ranging capabilities of the proposed Chemistry/CAIC hub mean that Advanced Materials relevant to a wide range of fields can be interrogated. We expect new data to impact on research in a range of areas, including aerospace, automotives, battery and energy technology, catering and food production, communications, drilling and refining, drug delivery, electronics, healthcare, hygiene, ICT, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, regenerative engineering and sensing.