MRI: Acquisition of a Cryogenic, Aberration-Corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope for Advanced Materials Research and Education

非技术性： 该奖项支持获得第一种电子显微镜，该显微镜允许使用电子束在自然环境中研究材料，该电子束可以聚焦到亚原子点，产生其结构和化学的三维图像。虽然传统的电子显微镜研究仅限于可以在与外层空间相当的硬真空中生存的材料，但这种新仪器将首次允许研究人员拍摄固体和液体的快照，更重要的是看到通过快速冷冻稳定的固体和液体之间的界面发生的过程。了解这些界面具有广泛的影响，从使科学家和工程师能够设计更耐用的电池，更有效的汽车燃料电池催化剂，到更好地保留土壤中的养分。为了满足整个校园以及全国各地的行业和大学对这种能力的巨大需求，该仪器将作为康奈尔材料研究中心（CCMR）的一部分提供给校园内以及其他大学，行业和国家实验室的研究人员和学生。该显微镜还将为本科生，特别是代表性不足的少数民族和妇女提供动手研究机会，作为CCMR本科生研究经验计划的一部分，为中学女生提供体验科学兴奋的机会，作为扩展你的视野计划的一部分，并通过CCMR的教师研究经验计划支持K-12教师的发展，并通过MicroWorld，一个基于显微镜的活动，将适应下一代科学标准的挑战。该仪器将通过提供材料和设备的独特表征能力，并通过教育新一代电子显微镜学家，对科学研究和培训产生广泛影响，这将导致对国家实现至关重要的广泛研究领域的重大科学和技术进步。的研究议程，并保持国家在至关重要的科学和技术领域的竞争地位。技术支持： 电子显微镜设计的最新进展开启了固体内部原子分辨率成像和光谱学的新时代。液/固界面尚未在高空间分辨率下成像，但在从催化到电化学储能到生物矿物形成的一系列生物，化学和物理过程中发挥着关键作用。随着研究液体速冻在玻璃态的能力，这种cryo-STEM，结合低振动cryo-stages从生物学与分辨率增强像差校正从材料科学，将使目前不可行的结构和光谱研究的电极/电解质界面在电池和燃料电池，有机/矿物界面在乳腺癌肿瘤和钙化主动脉瓣，和液体/矿物复合物在土壤中。更一般地说，矿物与液体或软组织之间的这类"硬/软"界面尚未在高空间分辨率下进行探索，因为研究"硬"和"软"成分的方法不相容。在低温下操作还将使用户能够以纳米分辨率获得对细胞环境大分子组织的前所未有的见解，并在人工工程材料和强相关系统中获得新的电子状态和阶段。由于能够捕获界面处成核的早期阶段，从生物矿化到能量转换和储存，复杂的电子材料和使用土壤的碳封存等多个学科领域长期未回答的问题可以得到解决。

Nontechnical: This award supports the acquisition of a first-of-its-kind electron microscope that allows materials to be studied in their natural environment using an electron beam that can be focused down to a subatomic spot, producing three-dimensional images of their structure and chemistry. While traditional electron microscope studies are limited to only materials that can survive in a hard vacuum comparable to that of outer space, this new instrument will, for the first time, allow researchers to take snapshots of both solids and liquids, and more importantly see the processes that occur at interfaces between solids and liquids stabilized by snap freezing. Understanding such interfaces has a wide-ranging impact, from enabling scientists and engineers to design more durable batteries, more efficient catalysts for automotive fuel cells, to better retain nutrients in soil. To meet the huge demand for this capability both across campus, and also from industries and universities across the country, this instrument will be available as part of Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) to researchers and students across campus as well as from other universities, industry and national labs. The microscope will also provide hands-on research opportunities for undergraduates, particularly under-represented minorities and women as part of the CCMR Research Experience for Undergraduates program, offer middle school girls the opportunity to experience the excitement of science as part of the Expanding Your Horizons program, and support K-12 teachers development through CCMR's Research Experience for Teachers program, and through MicroWorld, a microscopy-based activity that will be adapted to meet the challenges of the Next Generation Science Standards. This instrument will have broad impacts on science research and training by providing unique characterization capabilities of materials and devices and by educating a new generation of electron microscopists, which will lead to major scientific and technical advances in broad areas of research that are critical to the fulfillment of the nation?s research agenda, and the maintenance of the country's competitive position in critically important fields of science and technology. Technical: Recent advances in electron microscopy design have opened a new era of atomic resolution imaging and spectroscopy inside solids. Liquid/solid interfaces have yet to be imaged at high spatial resolution, but play a critical role in a range of biological, chemical and physical processes from catalysis to electrochemical energy storage to the formation of biominerals. With the ability to study liquids snap-frozen in a vitreous state, this cryo-STEM, combining the low-vibration cryo-stages from biology with the resolution-enhancing aberration-correctors from materials science, will enable presently unfeasible structural and spectroscopic studies of electrode/electrolyte interfaces in batteries and fuel cells, organic/mineral interfaces in breast cancer tumors and calcified aortic valves, and liquid/mineral complexes in soils. More generally, this class of "hard/soft" interfaces between minerals and liquids or soft tissue has not been explored at high spatial resolution, as the methods for studying the "hard" and "soft" components have been incompatible. Operating at cryogenic temperatures will also allow users to gain unprecedented insights into the macromolecular organization of cellular environments at nanometer resolution and to access a new range of emergent electronic states and phases in artificially engineered materials and strongly-correlated systems. With the ability to capture the early stages of nucleation at interfaces, long unanswered questions in fields across multiple disciplines from biomineralization to energy conversion and storage, complex electronic materials and carbon sequestration using soils can be addressed.