Per Hour Charge for use of the high resolution Field Emission Gun Scanning Electron Microscope.

We have three high resolution Field Emission Gun Scanning Electron Microscopes (FEGSEM) available for use within the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC). The systems are equipped with the latest Energy Dispersive X-Ray analysis (EDX) silicon drift detectors and have high speed Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) cameras on all systems enabling high resolution EBSD maps to be acquired.

Per Hour Charge for use of the Focused Ion Beam (FIB) / Dualbeam Microscope.

The FIB consists of a high resolution field emission electron column and gallium source ion column combined within the same instrument. This allows milling of cross sections (typically 20 x 5 microns) through samples and subsequent imaging using either electrons or ions.

The Dual Beam allows cross sections to be made through defects of delicate surfaces e.g oxides, the preparation of TEM samples from site specific areas where this is impossible using conventional means, ion beam imaging and 3D reconstructions of materials. Features observed can be analysed in situ by EDS and EBSD.

Per Hour Charge for use of the Transmission Electron Microscope (FEGTEM).

The FEI Tecnai™ F20 is a versatile Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) that can operate in conventional parallel illumination mode or as a Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope (STEM). In STEM mode the system is able to provide high spatial resolution chemical information from either the revolutionary new large area (80mm2) windowless Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) or the complementary spectrum mapping using the Gatan ENFINA Electron Energy Loss Spectrometer.

The system is one of the second generation (G2) series of microscopes that use a thermally assisted field emission gun. The Supertwin (S-TWIN) symmetric lenses are optimized for versatility combining high resolution in both TEM and STEM, whilst providing sufficient space for high angular sample manipulation and high count rate capability in X-Ray microanalysis. In addition to the EDS and PEELS spectrometers, the system is also equipped with a Gatan multi scan CCD camera, a Fischione High Angular Dark Field detector (HAADF) and separate bright field and dark field detectors.