Quantitative Analysis of Nanomaterials with new Automated Techniques in the Electron Microscope

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Gauvin group is one of the leading groups in the world in modeling and improving the understanding of electron beam interaction with solids for the development of new quantitative methods in the electron microscope. In the last 7 years, the Gauvin Group has developed one of the best laboratories in the world for Scanning Electron Microscopy that led to the training of several graduate students that received many research awards. Among these new microscopes, the SU-9000 is the first in the world to have electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) capabilities at 30 keV. Also, the SU-9000EA has a 0,2 nm resolution in bright field STEM imaging mode, giving a direct competition to the most expensive transmission electron microscopes. This research proposal is to put electron microscopy affordable for the whole scientific community by demonstrating the clear advantages of scanning electron microscopy as well as developing the next generation of automated software and techniques to perform accurate analysis of complex microstructure of materials with nanometer spatial resolution as well as performing electron microscopy without operators for routine characterization. These software's will be based on innovative electron modelling, like Bohmian Mechanics, and also will use the Deep Learning techniques of Artificial Intelligence. Applying these new software's with the less expensive scanning electron microscopes will make electron microscopy truly affordable for the whole scientific community. Automation will give more beam time to the community and more science will be performed leading to more materials development. This project will train 3 master students, 7 Ph.D. students and one postdoc. Since more than 100 000 scientific paperspublished since 1990 and related to nanotechnology used an electron microscope, it is clear that any advance in electron microscopy will have a significant impact in science and technology.