Five
Microscopy Centers "TEAM" Up to Create
World's Highest-Resolution Microscope
The
U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy
Sciences is funding a $100 million project, called
the Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected
Microscope (TEAM), which would be the world's
highest-resolution microscope.
TEAM microscopists shown with Argonne ’s
highest-resolution microscope. Clockwise
from right are Bernd Kabius, Nestor Zaluzec,
and Dean Miller.
Five
major electron microscopy centers are teaming
up on the project: Argonne National Lab, Brookhaven
National Lab, Lawrence Berkeley Naitonal Lab,
Oak Ridge National Lab, and the Frederick Seitz
Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
One
of the project's goals is achieve a resolution
of 0.5 angstrom — about one million times
smaller than the diameter of a human hair — by the end of the decade. Another goal is to acquire
three-dimensional images at atomic resolution.
Abberation correction is crucial for meeting both
of these goals.
"Lens
aberration is the most significant limitation
to resolution in electron microscopy," said
Argonne Materials Science Division TEAM leader
Dean Miller. Without aberration correction, looking
at samples is equivalent to looking through the
dimpled bottom of a wine bottle in which everything
is distorted. Aberrations are caused by illumination
traveling and focusing differently though the
edges and center of the microscope's objective
lens.
The
TEAM project will build the first aberration-corrected
microscope platform at Berkeley; that basic platform
will be customized so each lab can build one for
its own research interests. The five TEAM instruments
will be available to users worldwide.
The
project is expected to yield results such as the
first atomic structure determination of glass,
understanding magnetism and ferroelectricity in
nanostructures at the microscopic level, and imaging
defects in the oxygen sub-lattice of complex oxides.
