2 February 2015

JEOL and UC Irvine partner to develop electron microscopy and materials research center

The University of California's Irvine Materials Research Institute (IMRI) recently entered into a strategic partnership with JEOL USA Inc of Peabody, MA (a subsidiary of Japan's JEOL Ltd that supplies electron optical equipment and instrumentaton for scientific and industrial R&D) to create an electron microscopy and materials science research facility. IMRI will serve as an interdisciplinary hub for the study and development of new materials, targeting advances in solar cell, battery, semiconductor, biological science, and medical technologies.

The IMRI is headed by Dr Xiaoqing Pan, a researcher in the physics of materials who has joined the UC Irvine faculty this year to lead the $20m initiative.

The new 'JEOL Center for Nanoscale Solutions' electron microscopy cluster will house JEOL's highest-performing transmission electron microscopes (TEM) for characterizing and analyzing materials to determine their potential for advanced applications.

The facility will be the first research lab in the Americas to install the new JEOL Grand ARM, which is reckoned to exceed atomic resolution boundaries for any existing commercially available TEM. The Grand ARM offers 63pm resolution at 300keV for atom-by-atom characterization and chemical mapping. It features JEOL-proprietary spherical aberration correctors integrated in the image-forming system and illumination system, and an ultra-stable cold-cathode field emission electron gun.

The center will also house the high-throughput, nano-analysis JEM-2800 TEM/STEM, which features dual large-area Silicon Drift Detectors with what is claimed to be unprecedented sensitivity for high-throughput EDS analysis.

"The electron microscopy initiative and the IMRI at UC Irvine will provide new tools and great opportunities for potential collaborations with the many researchers on campus and in southern California," says Pan. In his work he has pioneered the development of advanced functional materials and the characterization of their structure-property relationships at the atomic scale, ranging from ceramics and semiconductors to biological materials and nanomaterials.

"With the installation of our flagship atomic-resolution TEM, the JEOL Center for Nanoscale Solutions will be the most advanced electron microscopy cluster available for probing the atomic structure and properties of materials," reckons JEOL USA president Peter Genovese.  

Tags: microscopy

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