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Science World's Most Advanced Microscope Unveiled
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - October 21, 2008 12:11 PM

28 comment(s) - last by Justin Case.. on Oct 22 at 1:11 PM

McMaster University unveils powerful microscope

The electron microscope is a very precise instrument that uses a beam of electrons to examine objects on a fine scale. Some electron microscopes can magnify specimens as much as 2 million times. McMaster University has unveiled the world's most advanced microscope that is capable of even finer resolution.

The new electron microscope was built in the Netherlands by the FEI Company and cost in the area of $15 million. The microscope was installed at the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy at McMaster University.

Gianluigi Botton, leader of the microscope project said in a statement, "We are the first university in the world with a microscope of such a high caliber. The resolution of the Titan 80-300 Cubed microscope is remarkable, the equivalent of the Hubble Telescope looking at the atomic level instead of at stars and galaxies. With this microscope we can now easily identify atoms, measure their chemical state and even probe the electrons that bind them together."

The microscope is housed in a special facility built to withstand ultralow vibrations, low noise, and minute temperature fluctuations. The device will be used to examine every day products at the nano level to understand, manipulate, and improve their efficiency according to John Preston from the university. One task of the microscope will be to help create denser memory for faster electronics and telecommunication devices.

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It's not all that exclusive or new...

By Tiamat on 10/21/2008 12:31:44 PM , Rating: 5

The FEI Titan 80-300 is a built-to-order (like most expensive pieces of equipment) combination scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope that runs at 80keV/300keV respectively. There are 7 of them in/planned for various US sites, one of which is Carnegie Mellon.

To better understand what this S/TEM can do, here is a link that shows the resolution compared to previous microscopes when looking at Silicon at an atomic level.

http://www.cmu.edu/corporate/news/2008/features/ti...

RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By geddarkstorm on 10/21/2008 12:38:08 PM , Rating: 3

Your post was much more helpful than the article, thank you. I was about to ask if this thing was a scanning or tunneling microscope. Very cool development. I wonder what advances they gave to the objective "lens" magnet to control so well for beam incoherence and spherical/chromatic aberration *whistles at the sweet pic* That is some outstanding resolution, just amazing.

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By 3DoubleD on 10/21/2008 1:01:52 PM , Rating: 3

It is in fact very exclusive despite being derived from an existing built-to-order product. McMaster will have two of these microscopes, however, only one will boast the extreme resolutions and capabilities that made it newsworthy. The real genius behind the microscope is the room which it is housed, not so much the model that was purchased (don't get me wrong though, the microscope is amazing too). So while others are planned elsewhere, it is up to the institutions purchasing them to install them in a correct facility. Like I said, Mcmaster will have two Titans, one which is currently housed in a special room, the other in a normal room. Each of these microscopes will cater to different needs of our projects.

Also, you may think this isn't that exclusive or new because 7 are planned throughout the US, but McMaster has been using this microscope for almost a year, last Friday was the "Official" opening of the Canadian Center for Electron Microscopy. In fact, several papers have already been published with images from this microscope.

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By Tiamat on 10/21/2008 2:05:28 PM , Rating: 3

For all TEMs (and SEMs), the room must be controlled mechanically, acoustically, and in climate for ultimate resolution. While I don't want to sound like I am downplaying this at all, it is important to realize (as you hinted in your post) that if the public knows about it, the research community has been testing it for a while. I don't think it is all that exclusive not because there are 7 planned, but because I've heard/read about it in the past along with the competitor's machines like the Zeiss helium ion microscope that is currently at Harvard. I guess to me, this is simply business as usual :)

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By 3DoubleD on 10/21/2008 2:44:03 PM , Rating: 5

I would say it is as exclusive as Intel's 45nm manufacturing facilities are. The Foundry, TSMC, IBM, ect will all have 45 nm manufacturing facilities (if not already) but Intel was the only one for a while. The same goes for top of the line equipment in any field, if you are an early adopter, you have to deal with more problems but you get to have it first. It is still exclusive, but when others catch up it won't be.

As for the room TEM/SEMs are housed in, they are climate controlled and are usually on an anti-vibration table, but no where near as much as the room the Titan is held in. I have never seen a microscope with its own building/foundation and 2 stories of EM shielding, temperature control (heating/cooling panels completely cover the walls), and airflow management. You have to operate this microscope from another building because the electric field/heat/vibrations from you body will distort the image. Any other SEM/TEM I've used I sit no less than 2 meters away from the sample with two or three computers/monitors. Of course, this is the only sub-angstrom TEM I've ever seen and these extensive measures are not necessary for regular TEM/SEM resolutions.

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By abzillah on 10/21/2008 2:32:06 PM , Rating: 1

The pic of the microscope is not right, an electron microscope is quite a bit larger than that. But it would be awesome to have an electron microscope that small. I would buy 10 by selling my unborn children on ebay!

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By toyotabedzrock on 10/21/2008 5:49:45 PM , Rating: 2

Maybe its just me but that third image looks like the second image with a filter applied. In other words it looks more like the advance was made in processing of the image, and possibly in the realisation that it needs to be in a special structure to reduce outside influence.

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RE: It's not all that exclusive or new...

By Alexstarfire on 10/21/2008 10:29:26 PM , Rating: 2

Or it could be that the third image is an updated machine used to make the second image. If you noticed the second image is from a 1998 machine and the third one from the new 2008, I presume anyways. It would make sense that the latter 2 are very similar since they are from similar machines. The first one is from a completely different microscope.

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So how does it work?

By Fenixgoon on 10/21/2008 1:12:35 PM , Rating: 2

Since the limiting factor to electron microscopes are the De Broglie wavelengths of the electrons, what makes this different and superior to other SEM/TEM's?

I'm actually quite interested.

RE: So how does it work?

By SpaceJumper on 10/21/2008 1:27:52 PM , Rating: 3

No, you are not. :-)

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RE: So how does it work?

By Fenixgoon on 10/21/2008 6:55:32 PM , Rating: 2

ok so how have aperture and a few other things too =P

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RE: So how does it work?

By 3DoubleD on 10/21/2008 1:32:08 PM , Rating: 3

As mentioned in the article, it is a combination of the latest TEM technologies with a special room designed for low EM noise/vibrations/temperature fluxuations. Everything in this room is very controlled. The microscope even has its own foundation separate from the building. When you reduce the noise to such a low level, new effects appear. Aberrations due to quantum effects become present. As the electrons travel vertically through the microscope, they may tunnel horizontally (their position cannot exactly be known due to the Uncertainty Principle). This results in a blurred image. To fix this aberration, quantum mechanical calculations are performed to predict the behavior of the electrons and correct the image.

It is certainly very difficult to attain such resolutions and scientist and engineers who design these systems have to combat numerous sources of noise and aberration to give researchers what they want, no easy task.

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RE: So how does it work?

By geddarkstorm on 10/21/2008 3:04:40 PM , Rating: 3

There are three main factors that affect the contrast of an EM, and thus its working resolution - Beam Coherence, Spherical and Chromatic Aberration. Most of these issues are addressed at the stage of the objective "lens"; so the quality of the "lens" greatly determines the noise and thus resulting contrast/resolution of the microscope. Dose rate is also a major factor depending on the sample, as higher doses can destroy a specimen, and at too low a dose you don't have the contrast necessary to see the specimen.

Unlike a light microscope, which we have pretty much perfected the lenses for, an electron microscope "lens" is not nearly as perfect and it's hard to control the nature of the electromagnet that makes up that lens to correct for the twisting of the electron beam as it travels after diffraction. There is also the issue of contrast - even if you have the magnification to resolve two objects, the contrast may not be high enough to see them against background. The wavelength of the electrons determines the max theoretical resolution possible, which is more than enough to see atoms, but it's the contrast that determines the real, working resolution, which is usually not nearly enough to even make out large proteins in biology. Unlike light microscope objective lenses, and EM objective "lens" has an associated contrast transfer function (CTF, made up of the three factors from my first paragraph) that greatly limits the visible resolution. That is, as you go outward in Fourier transform reciprical space, the diffraction pattern becomes impossible to see and you are left with low resolution data and a high volume of noise. Also, the phase of some points of data are simply lost all together due to the CTF, which is changed by defocusing the "lens". This is what limits EM, basically, in biology to only being useful at looking at very large macromolecular complexes which have the potential to give a high enough contrast, which can be boosted using metal staining. Even then, fine details are impossible to make out.

How this Titan does such a good job is not simply because of the room it's in, but also whatever system they've used to form the objective "lens" and correct for the CTF.

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RE: So how does it work?

By 3DoubleD on 10/21/2008 5:42:47 PM , Rating: 3

Good post, very thorough.

From my discussion with the CCEM people, the "lens" in electron microscopes has come a long way in the last few years and many of these issues are corrected for. I've seen this microscope referred to as an "aberration correct high resolution TEM" in papers. You are correct that the room doesn't make this thing great, the microscope is state-of-the-art. What allows it to realize its full potential though is the room it is built in as it is more sensitive than more common TEM/SEMs.

Also, from what I understand of the problems that arise from biological samples contrast isn't even the worst of it. Since SEM and TEM are done in at least high vacuum (10^-6 Torr), many biological samples don't survive.

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Beats LHC

By kontorotsui on 10/21/08, Rating: 0

RE: Beats LHC

By Curelom on 10/21/2008 12:51:57 PM , Rating: 2

No, but the next microscope built will be a higgs boson microscope, or maybe it was the strange quark microscope.

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RE: Beats LHC

By ziggo on 10/21/2008 2:46:02 PM , Rating: 2

I thought that a higgs-boson is what gave things mass?

Thus a higgs-boson microscope would function less like a microscope and more like a rocket engine.

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$15M seems...

By lukasbradley on 10/21/2008 12:57:04 PM , Rating: 1

...inexpensive....?

RE: $15M seems...

By 3DoubleD on 10/21/2008 1:18:45 PM , Rating: 3

It is expensive compared to "regular" High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopes (HRTEM). It is also expensive considering it is mostly financed by research funding. While the CCEM will generate revenue from industry contracts, it will primarily be used by McMaster and the surrounding universities.

That said, the advantages of this microscope over "regular" HRTEMs are few. Not all nanotechnology projects will directly benefit from increased resolution. The sub-angstrom scale becomes necessary (useful) for only the smallest nanostructures. Thus a microscope like this is very expensive for an institution to invest in unless it can bring in additional projects from surrounding universities and industries.

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Withstand?

By Justin Case on 10/21/08, Rating: 0

RE: Withstand?

By InvertMe on 10/21/2008 3:00:27 PM , Rating: 2

No he has it correct.

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RE: Withstand?

By Justin Case on 10/22/2008 1:11:48 PM , Rating: 1

Unless the meaning of the word was changed as part of the Paulson plan, it's pretty clear that he doesn't.

Withstand means "to oppose with force or resolution", "to endure" or "to be successful in resisting". It doesn't take "a special facility" to resist ultra-low vibration, low noise and minute temperature differences.

The point of the "special facility" is to make sure that vibration, noise and temperature differences never become high enough to affect the microscope (ie, the facility exists to ensure that, inside it, all those factors are kept "ultra-low").

I'm not saying it was Shane's error, I'm talking about the guy quoted in the article (though, since that part of Shane's summary isn't between quotes, he should have caught and corrected the bad semantics).

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University's name made me laugh

By gtrinku on 10/21/2008 3:41:56 PM , Rating: 2

"Yo, this is MC Master, and we're gonna be spinning some electrons tonight"

Phenom???

By Clauzii on 10/21/2008 4:49:42 PM , Rating: 2

I see the company also have a Phenom(TM) Desktop SEM??

I thought that was AMDs trademark, but I'll guess it's not then..

...

By g35fan on 10/21/2008 11:16:08 PM , Rating: 2

the Russians are now a step closer to figuring out the Red October wreckage is nowhere to be found

nano level...?

By mmcdonalataocdotgov on 10/22/2008 7:49:55 AM , Rating: 2

I was curious as to the intent of this sentence...

quote:
The device will be used to examine every day products at the nano level ...

In fact, it is claimed that this microscope can work at the sub-angstrom level (0.1 nanometers). I thought that sentence limited the magnification to one nanometer, which wasn't going to fill the bill.