Microscopy - Winners
A central tool for so many labs and industries, the microscope has continued its evolution and diversification, pushing beyond the microscale and well into the nanoscale.
Jul 8
2010 R&D 100 Microscopy/Image Analysis Winners
Feb 8
Named one of 10 SPIE 2009 Prism Awards winners, the Scanning Microwave Microscopy Mode (SMM Mode) instruments from Agilent Technologies Inc. earned an R&D 100 Award in 2009 for this useful adaptation of the atomic force microscope for use in the semiconductor industry.
8/24/2009
A team of researchers at National Security Technologies (NSTec) LLC (Los Alamos, N.M and Santa Barbara, Calif.) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.) produced a holographic imaging device that can help scientists study various materials surfaces under shock-loaded conditions.
8/18/2009
Russian company NT-MDT has received a prestigious R+D 100 Award! Fully automated SPM SOLVER NEXT has been selected by independent experts of R+D Magazine as the 2009 R+D 100 Award winner. This ...
8/14/2009
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that its Scanning Microwave Microscopy Mode (SMM Mode) for use with its 5420 and 5600 atomic force microscopes (AFM) has been named an R+D 100 Award...
7/28/2009
The SOLVER Next from NT-MDT Company (Zelenograd, Moscow, Russia) is one of the new generation of automated scanning probe microscope (SPM). However, it differs from other SPMs in that it offers both atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) capabilities in a single, automatically exchangeable platform.
7/28/2009
By leveraging silicon processing technologies, Novelx (Lafayette, Calif.) has brought to market a significant innovation in how scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) are built and operate. mySEM is a compact, low voltage, company, field emission SEM.
7/27/2009
The Thermo Sceintific Nicolet iN10 MX infrared microscope from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Madison, Wisc., does not require any special training in microscopy or spectroscopy or special attachments.
7/27/2009
Hyperspectral microscopes image hundreds of spectral wavelengths when obtaining spectral images, allowing users to observe multiple individually-fluorescing species. Microscope developers at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, N.M.) have combined this capability with 3-D confocal imaging and multivariate curve analysis software to help observers discover and quantify these species.
7/27/2009
The Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope (TEAM) Electron Microscope Stage is the answer to 3-D atomic-resolution electronic imaging from researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.), FEI Company (Hillsboro, Ore.), and Attocube Systems (Munich, Germany). The TEAM Stage is the first electron microscope stage to be housed completely within the vacuum column of the microscope.
7/27/2009
The Magellan XHR SEM marks an attempt by FEI Company (Hillsboro, Ore.) to make sub-nanometer scanning electron microscopy (SEM) resolution accessible to non-experts and without restrictions on samples or difficult operational requirements.
7/27/2009
The integrated Triple Beam Technology represented by the products NVision 40 Argon and XVision 200/300 TB has been developed by Carl Zeiss SMT (Oberkochen, Germany) and SII NanoTechnology Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) to specifically meet new TEM sample standards while not losing out on the high precision and sample throughput expected by TEM customers.
7/27/2009
The Cypher AFM from Asylum Research (Santa Barbara, Calif.) offers significant upgrades from the existing field of older AFM/SPMs. Designed from the ground up with a host of new features, the Cypher uses a patented sensor technology that is capable of atomic resolution in all three axes.
7/27/2009
According to its developers at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.) and Xradia Inc. (Concord, Calif.), the Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe (HXN) represents the first of what is expected to be a new class of high-performance hard x-ray microscopes.
7/27/2009
While traditional atomic force microscopy (AFM) capacitance techniques are defined exclusively by the inherent capabilities of an AFM, the Scanning Microwave Microscopy Mode (SMM Mode) developed by Agilent Technologies (Chandler, Ariz.) combines the compound, complex electrical measurement capabilities of a microwave vector network analyzer with the nanoscale spatial resolution of an atomic force microscope.
7/27/2009
A new type of AFM probe, NaDiaProbes, has reached the marketplace after development by Advanced Diamond Technologies, Inc. (Romeoville, Ill.), Univ. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Penn.), and Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wisc). The key innovation is a type of diamond—ultrananocrystalline diamond—that takes advantage of the mineral’s properties by achieving extremely small grain sizes for extra hardness.
10/2/2008
To keep pace with ever more stringent accuracy requirements of modern optics manufacturing, QED Technologies (Rochester, N.Y.) has developed the Subaperture Stitching Interferometer for Aspheres (SSI-A), a six-axis, computer-controlled interferometric workstation that marks a first in the optics industry.
10/2/2008
Time-of-flight mass spectrometers, which are used in atomic probes, use the transit time for ions to determine the mass-to-charge ratio for the ion, which gives the atomic composition. The mass resolution is improved with a reflectron. However, reflectrons deal poorly with large angle spreads unless they are excessively large. The angle problem is worsened by chromatic aberration. The LEAP 3000X HR from Imago Scientific Instruments Corp. (Madison, Wisc.) avoids this problem by adopting a 3-D shape, instead of a series of planar ring electrodes, as is usual.
10/2/2008
Aspex Corp. (Delmont, Penn.) has developed the JEMM Xtreme, a ruggedized deployable automated SEM which can perform the necessary compositional analysis of the individual wear fragments.
10/2/2008
Fluorescence microscopy has already shown its great value in following the position of quantum dots, organic dyes, and fluorescent proteins. But revealing movements in three dimensions, with real-time observation, hadn’t surfaced until the recent development of the 3-D Tracking Microscope by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.). This microscope builds on a laser-scanning confocal architecture, but differs in that optical fibers are used as spatial filters for four circular “pinholes”.
10/2/2008
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) and Asylum Research's (Santa Barbara, Calif.) Adaptive band excitation controller and software for scanning probe microscopy is able to make measurements at a much faster rate than previous efforts by using non-sinusoidal driving signals to scan all resonant frequencies at once. This reduces image acquisition to just 10 min versus 10 hours for normal SPM.
10/2/2008
Many materials and biological processes occur far too quickly for a high-end microscope to witness, let alone the human eye. Observation of these phenomena, which can occur under extreme temperature and applied pressure, requires a tool like the Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope (DTEM), developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.) and JEOL USA, Inc. (Peabody, Mass.). The DTEM captures images with a high spatial resolution of less than 10 nm, using a laser-driven electron source to produce an extremely brief but intense pulse of 109 electrons.
10/2/2008
The latest beam-based microscope from Carl Zeiss SMT (Peabody, Mass.) might look similar to a scanning electron microscope, but under the hood it’s a much different animal. Instead of electrons, the ORION Helium Ion Microscope projects a beam of much heavier helium ions, which scatter less at the sample surface and help produce a crisper image.
10/2/2008
The Automated Confocal Raman & Atomic Force Microscopy–alpha 500 from WITec GmbH (Ulm, Germany) is the first to blend the chemical 3-D imaging capability of confocal Raman microscopy with the structural surface analytical ability of atomic force microscopy (AFM) in an automated system for large samples.
10/2/2008
The Achilles’ heel of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging is low sensitivity from faint nuclear magnetic spins. This is not as much of a problem in large human-size image elements, but for analysis of mice models, particularly those used in brain research, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is prohibitive. The 9.4T Mouse Brain Quadrature CryoProbe from Bruker BioSpin AG and Bruker BioSpin MRI GmbH (Faellenden, Switzerland) combines a variety of improvements to reduce measurement time by a factor of five over other MRI instruments.
10/2/2008
What constitutes the perfect microscope? Is it the resolution? Flexibility for examining a wide variety of samples? One that can be used quickly and often? The Extreme Ultraviolet Light Table-Top Microscope (EUVM-1) from the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology, Colorado State Univ. (Fort Collins, Colo.) appears to strive for all of these qualities and meets them efficiently.
10/2/2008
Tessera Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) bypasses the cumbersome optics and places their OptiML Wafer-Level Camera directly on the wafer, reducing the camera module profile by 50%. The camera optics are manufactured at the wafer level.
9/29/2008
The board investigating the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia learned that flaws present in the shuttle's external tank protection system may play a role in foam release, which damages the shuttle itself. But detecting these defects can be difficult. NASA Glenn Research Center (Brookpark, Ohio) with NASA Langley Research Center and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. (Hampton, Va.), have solved this problem by creating Simultaneous Non-Contact Precision Imaging of Microstructural and Thickness Variation in Dielectric Materials Using Terahertz Energy.
9/25/2008
The 2-MGEM Optical Anisotropy Factor Measurement System was developed by Hinds Instruments, Inc. (Hillsboro, Ore.) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) to help evaluate the optical anisotropy of the second and fourth layers of the particle, which are made of pyrocarbon. The system can measure eight elements of the Mueller matrix in reflection at near-normal incidence of a sample spot less than 4 microns in diameter.