2009 R&D 100 Winner
Electron microscopes are reaching sub-angstrom resolution, but they lack a sample stage that can accommodate flexible, 360-degree viewing capability. 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. This architecture, achieved by using a minimal number of moving parts to allow a compact design, boosts stability with respect to vibrations and noise by 10 times over competing stages. It is also the first stage to allow near-360-degree positioning along two orthogonal axes entirely by way of piezos. This design is responsible for a movement precision of 0.014 nm, nearly 100 times that of other stages. The TEAM Stage can reduce weeks of post-processing image corrections in the lab to a few hours.
Technology
Microscope stage
Developers
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
FEI Company
Attocube Systems