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新设备至关重要。它们将定义我们创造更清洁、更廉价、更安全、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面临的许多最紧迫的问题，如能源、医疗保健和医药、减少污染、食品生产和制造业。然而，开发这些新材料的核心是正确理解支撑它们在原子和/或分子水平上的结构和性能的科学。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，该中心将独特地强调“材料合成”。能力将包括支持多个研究学科的定制设施。该中心的先锋将是200千伏场发射枪扫描透射电子显微镜（fg -s /TEM），具有出色的高分辨率和STEM成像能力，能量色散x射线能谱（EDX）和电子能量损失能谱（EELS），用于阐明化学成分和键合。层析重建多幅图像的能力，使复杂材料的3D可视化和冷冻支架不仅可以分析所谓的“硬”材料，还可以研究“软”材料。这个由tem领导的中心将成为大学范围内的EM网络的一部分，其中每个中心维护和开发不同专业的仪器，并在它们之间为我们在剑桥的研究组合创造必要的设备能力。“硬”材料通常是高度结晶的，可以表现出长程有序；然而，紊乱往往对它们的功能至关重要。它们包括金属和金属氧化物，多孔材料，如沸石和金属有机框架，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、纳米凝胶和仿生或生物材料。这些提出了非常不同的分析挑战，并意味着仪器通常被设计用于处理一种或另一种样品类型。然而，最新一代的tem有能力询问这两种不同类型的样本。这一发展为化学等部门提供了一种循序渐进的改变，这些部门的研究小组合成了大量的硬材料和软材料，可以接近先进材料的表征。现在有可能开发一个新兴市场中心，以满足如此广泛的研究人口。这对最先进的研究有两个改变游戏规则的影响。首先，提出的仪器将率先建立一个EM中心，这将为学术界和工业界的硬、软先进材料社区之间的思想和技术的交叉受精提供独特的机会。其次，它将为广泛的研究小组提供必要的能力建设，确保研究人员能够日常接触，并能够比目前更有效地对样本进行分类，从而提高效率，从而可以对更专业的仪器进行更详细的分析。拟议的化学/CAIC中心的广泛能力意味着可以询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、信息通信技术、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.