FEI has received US (DoE) contracts for four Titan scanning/transmission electron microscopes (S/Tems) developed as part of the Team (transmission electron aberration-corrected microscope) project
The goal of the collaborative Team project is to build the highest resolution S/Tem in the world, capable of direct observation and analysis of individual nanostructures at an unprecedented resolution of 0.5Angstrom - approximately one-third the size of a carbon atom - a key dimension for atomic level research.
The first Team Titan is expected to ship this month to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
A second Titan will be sent to CEOS (the Team partner that develops both the spherical (Cs) and the chromatic (Cc) aberration correctors for the project) where it will be fitted with a Cc corrector before shipping to Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
The third and fourth Titans attaining 0.5Angstrom resolution in Tem and Stem mode and 0.1eV energy resolution, will ship to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2007 and 2008, respectively, where they will be operated as the temporary Team 0.5 and the final Team I user instruments within the US National Center for Electron Microscopy.
Aberration-corrected electron microscopy technology is at the heart of the Team microscopes.
The 0.5Angstrom resolution of these advanced S/Tem systems provide tighter, brighter beams, yielding a stronger signal, higher image contrast, greater analytical sensitivity and unprecedented spatial resolution.
The successful development and integration of these unique aberration correctors deliver the ultimate view of the atomic world.
"We are very pleased to have reached this important milestone in the Team project".
"The Team partners are eager to take delivery of the Titan columns and begin their rigorous programmes of testing, alignment and optimisation".
"As the technical goals of this project are coming within reach, the prospect of using these extraordinary capabilities to explore new territory in the nanoworld is creating a great sense of anticipation in the scientific community," says Team's project director Uli Dahmen.
"We are extremely proud to be delivering the Team project systems," commented Ray Link, FEI's acting chief executive officer and CFO.
"These highly stable systems, featuring the aberration corrected operation of our ground-breaking Titan S/Tem will provide scientists at Team national laboratories with new capabilities as they advance their research in a variety of areas".
"The Team project represents one of the finest technical collaborations ever undertaken." Beyond the resolution previously unattainable on a commercially-available system, one of the greatest benefits of the Titan platform is that it provides important flexibility for future development of component upgrades.
Thus, researchers and industrial users will be able to easily and continuously obtain optimum performance from their system.
