Project
Development of new integrated FLUO/SEM microscopy modalities for electron diffraction and optical trapping
The study of the structure of nanocrystalline materials is often difficult as standard X-ray diffraction techniques break down for sub micrometer particles, especially when occurring in a mixture. This is resolved by trying to crystallize specific compounds in larger crystals, but this is often problematic and time consuming. State of the art single crystal X-ray diffraction moreover requires a trip to a synchrotron which creates unnecessary long delays between growing a new structure and determining its structure. Electron diffraction provides an alternative for X-ray diffraction and excels especially for nanoscale crystals as it provides several orders of magnitude more information per volume for the same radiation damage. However, so far, electron diffraction is performed on expensive and difficult to handle transmission electron microscopes (TEM) requiring extensive interaction from highly trained researchers. In this project, we propose to integrate a prototype electron diffractometer instrument, designed by Prof Verbeek of EMAT, UA, in our integrated fluo-SEM microscope. We propose to demonstrate this instrument on relevant material classes: one the one end a heavily researched electro-optical material, perovskites and on the other hand biomaterials, more specific microdomains in phospholipids.