Technical Support for a Dual Beam Focused Ion Milling System for TEM Foil Preparation + 3D Chemical Analysis

0521896绿色该奖项部分资助一名高级全职技术人员操作和维护聚焦离子束/扫描电子显微镜仪器。这一职位对于实现为该仪器计划的国家地球物理学支持方案至关重要。 FIB/SEM的购买成本超过100万美元，已被购买用于加州大学滨江校区的纳米材料研究。 该技术人员的提供将使加州大学滨江和国家科学基金会通过地球科学矿物性质研究委员会（COMPRES）共享使用仪器作为“伙伴关系”，为COMPRES机构的成员提供FIB/SEM仪器，用于透射电子显微镜（TEM）的“邮购”样品制备。用户费将向所有用户收取，但NSF对该技术人员的支持将大大支付地质/地球物理用户的费用。 这一概念得到了COMPRES的赞同，COMPRES为该方案的年度费用提供了额外资金。 尽管自20世纪60年代后期离子轰击稀释剂的发展以来，通过使用TEM在地质学和地球物理学（特别是矿物和岩石物理学）方面取得了许多进展，但TEM的应用受到了标本制备的巨大困难和时间的严重限制。FIB/SEM仪器的发展现在允许从基本上任何无机材料和至少一些有机材料（聚合物）的抛光表面上的精确定位的位点制备TEM试样（“箔”）。在地球科学中涉及固体的所有分支中广泛使用这种仪器所面临的根本问题是仪器的成本非常高，每年的维护费用也同样高，并且需要一名训练有素的专门技术人员来操作它。从而导致比当前商业可用性低得多的成本。 据估计，当该计划全面运作时，价格约为100美元/箔。

0521896GreenThis award partially funds a high-level full-time technician to operate and maintain a Focused Ion Beam / Scanning Electron Microscope instrument. This position is essential for enabling the national geophysics support program planned for this instrument. The FIB/SEM, with purchase cost greater than $1M, has been purchased for nanomaterials research on the UC Riverside campus. Provision of this technician will enable shared use of the instrument as a "partnership" between UC Riverside and the NSF via the COnsortium for Mineral Properties Research in Earth Sciences (COMPRES) to provide access for members of COMPRES institutions to a FIB/SEM instrument for "mail-order" specimen preparation for transmission electron microscopy (TEM). User fees will be charged to all users but the NSF support of this technician will significantly defray costs to users in geology/geophysics. This concept has been endorsed by COMPRES, which has granted additional funds toward the yearly cost of the program. Although many advances in geology and geophysics (and in particular in mineral and rock physics) have been achieved through use of TEM since development of the ion-bombardment thinner in the late 1960s, application of TEM has been significantly constrained by the great difficulty and time involved in specimen preparation. Development of the FIB/SEM instrument now allows preparation of TEM specimens ("foils") from precisely located sites on polished surfaces of essentially any inorganic material and at least some organic materials (polymers). The fundamental problem facing wide-spread use of such instrumentation in all branches of the Earth Sciences that deal with solids has been the very high cost of the instrument, its similarly high annual maintenance costs, and the need for a highly-trained, dedicated technician to operate it. The partnership being established with the funding of this technician will now circumvent these problems, leading to a much lower cost than current commercial availability. It is estimated that a price of ~$100/foil will be attainable when the program is fully operational.