Market Study of Compressed Ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscopy (CUTEM)

在材料科学、汽车工业、工业检测、纳米技术、生命科学、半导体、采矿和矿产以及石油和天然气工业等众多应用领域，透射电子显微镜都是不可或缺的。正如Grand View Research Inc.在2018年10月报告的那样，2017年全球电子显微镜市场规模为32亿美元。预计在预测期内(2018-2025年)将以7.4%的复合年增长率增长。然而，大多数TEM机的成像速度中等，最高可达每秒200帧，这最终受到成像传感器的限制。为克服这一局限性，动态瞬变电磁法应运而生，但它在层序深度、时间分辨率和视场等方面存在诸多缺陷。到目前为止，还没有现有的单镜头电影模式的瞬变电磁可以以亚纳秒的时间分辨率和纳米的空间分辨率记录数百帧图像。最近，我们发明了压缩超快透射电子显微镜(Cutem)，它在成像能力上比最先进的D-TEM有了巨大的飞跃。CUTEM将激光辅助的透射电子显微镜与基于压缩传感(CS)的计算成像方法结合在一起。只要对商业上可用的D-TEM系统进行最小限度的修改，Cutem将增加两个额外的组件。首先，具有二进制随机图案的透射式掩模将对电子探针束进行空间编码。其次，线性斜坡电压将被施加到扫描电极对(S)，以在时间上剪切单个时间帧。除了硬件上的创新，该方法还将利用基于CS的算法在时间和二维空间中检索信息。本发明将同时达到皮秒时间分辨率和纳米空间分辨率。它还将能够在一次采集中记录100多个帧。因此，它将为捕捉不可逆转的化学反应、不可重复的结构现象和难以重现的辐射-物质相互作用提供一个有吸引力的电子成像产品。

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is indispensable for numerous applications, including materials science, car industry, industrial inspection, nanotechnology, life sciences, semiconductors, mining & minerals sectors, and oil & gas industry. As Grand View Research Inc. reported in October 2018, the global electron microscope market size was valued at USD 3.2 billion in 2017. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 7.4% over the forecast period (2018-2025). However, most TEM machines have moderate imaging speeds up to 200 frames per second, which are ultimately limited by imaging sensors. To overcome this limitation, dynamic TEM (D-TEM) was invented, but it has various drawbacks in the sequence depth, the temporal resolution, and the field of view. Thus far, there is no existing single-shot movie-mode TEM that could record hundreds of frames with sub-nanosecond temporal resolution and nanometer spatial resolution. Recently, we invented compressed ultrafast transmission electron microscopy (CUTEM) that offers a quantum leap in imaging capability from state-of-the-art D-TEM. CUTEM combines laser-assisted TEM with computational imaging methodologies based on compressed sensing (CS). With a minimum modification of commercially available D-TEM systems, CUTEM will add two additional components. First, a transmissive mask with a binary random pattern will spatially encode the electron probe beam. Second, a linear ramp voltage will be applied to the pair(s) of sweep electrodes to temporally shear individual temporal frames. Besides innovation in hardware, the proposed method will leverage a CS-based algorithm to retrieve information in time and two-dimensional space. This invention will achieve simultaneously a picosecond temporal resolution and a nanometer spatial resolution. It will also be able to record more than 100 frames in a single acquisition. Thus, it will provide an attractive electron imaging product for capturing irreversible chemical reactions, non-repeatable structural phenomena, and difficult-to-reproduce radiation-matter interactions.