This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) in the Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope (STEM) is a bedrock quantitative analytical technique for modern materials development. This partnership between Rutgers University and Nion, Co., a small US business, will use aberration correction methods to develop the first Angstrom-level EELS instrument capable of 10 meV energy resolution. Using incident electron energies of 60-100 keV, studies of electronic, photonic and vibronic behavior of soft and hard sub-nanoscale materials will be possible. The instrument will include probe side chromatic aberration correction, an innovative method for monochromator-spectrometer energy registry, pre-spectrometer aberration correction, and a 2D single electron counting detector optimized for high sensitivity and high dynamic range. Accessible problems include: phonon and atomic/molecular vibrational behavior in nanoscale objects, electronic behavior of interfacial defects, energetics of configuration changes in carbon-based molecules, and mapping of nanoscale photonic and plasmonic fields. The instrument will be a superb tool for understanding structure-function relationships in numerous materials of importance to societal applications such as photovoltaics, energy storage, catalysis, high temperature hard coatings, nanoelectronics, photonics, and emergent behavior based on nanoscale processes. The world-leading combination of spatial and energy resolution will be valuable for motivating and training of students by communicating atomic level functionality in very graphic and visual ways. Rutgers diverse student body and its extensive outreach community will both benefit from this capability. This user facility, accessible to a broad portion of the scientific community, will be the first state-of-the-art aberration corrected EELS/STEM facility in New Jersey, providing direct access for both local educational and industrial users.
Non-Technical Summary: This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
New materials, particularly those developed on the nanoscale, provide critical advances required to meet many of the demanding societal problems confronting the next generations. The design of such materials requires visualization of atomic level structure, composition, and bonding at the finest level-atom by atom. For the past 50 years, electron microscopy, combined with electron energy loss spectroscopy, has been a workhorse, providing structure as well as atomic composition on the nanoscale and information on atomic bonding. Nevertheless, the most recent demands of nano-scale materials science require still more precise and sensitive tools. This partnership between Rutgers University and Nion Co., a small US business, will produce a leap ahead in electron spectroscopy capabilities to allow visualization of the function of structures which contain only a few atoms -- even down to single molecules, a region unattainable till now. The new tool aid the creation of new materials required for efficient energy production and storage, catalysis, nanoelectronics, photonics, and new materials yet to be created. The highly visual information will also play a significant role in motivating students, and preparing the future generation of advanced materials scientists and engineers. The instrument will be located at Rutgers University in the Laboratory for Surface Modification and will be administered by the Institute for Advanced Materials, Devices and Nanotechnology. This facility will be a world leader, bringing to the New Jersey region a new resource for the advancement of scientific understanding, for educational outreach, industrial interaction, and collaboration with other national and international scientific institutions.
Seeing the Structure and Behavior of Nanoscale Objects Our lives today are increasingly dependent on complicated machines - computers, phones, airplanes that practically fly themselves, and automobiles that will soon also drive themselves. These machines are made possible by the behavior of very small, "Nanoscale" materials that are deliberately built into the fabric of airplane engines, computers, automobile engines or even the high-strength cement installed in new buildings. These structures are many times smaller than a human hair, making them extremely difficullt to understand, without direct ways to "see" their structure or to "feel" their motion. We have built a microscope that allows us to "see" and "feel" Nanoscale structures. We use a very fine electron beam, about the size of a single hydrogen atom, that we move around a Nanoscale object, bouncing off it, producing a picture of its shape and location. We also measure the energy lost by the beam, tellng us how the Nanoscale structure absorbs and distributes energy. Thus the microscope allows us to "see and feel the Nanoscale" so we can better design Nanoscale structures, and also provide graphic, more easily understood pictures to the general public. It will become a superb tool for understanding the relationship of function to structure in photovoltaics, energy storage, catalysis, materials strength, nanoelectronics and photonics, and many other complex processes. New understanding will simplify development of new materials, producing broad, everyday impact. The project has created the highest energy resolution microscopy facility in the US, using a partnership between the Rutgers Institute for Advanced Materials Devices and Nanotechnology (IAMDN) and Nion, Co., a small US company, to discover new behavior in very small structures. The advance of science strongly correlates with the ability to "see", starting with the earliest telescopes and microscopes. This new tool will continue that advance for nano-science and nano materials. It will also be the first "aberration-corrected" electron microscope facility in New Jersey, allowing IAMDN, and Rutgers University, to provide local educational, industrial, and national laboratory communities access to this state of the art technique.
