Nanosciences and Nanomaterials
Solve the Most Pressing Challenges in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Innovation in nanotechnology is driven by increasing demand for cheaper and faster devices. To satisfy this demand, research into semiconductors, low-D materials, thin films, photonics and micro- and nanofluidics is becoming more complex. In other words, there is a constant drive to push nanosciences further so technology can advance beyond what’s currently available.
But nanomaterials research is only as good as the microscopy tools available. The right tools can help you easily gather critical information about your samples - and the more complex your sample or your research, the more stringent your analytical requirements will be. If your microscope cannot keep up with your research needs, then you and your project will be left behind.
"What would you do if you could detect magnetic moments as small as 1 Bohr magneton? In fact, you could watch single electron spins flip. And that’s what we are trying to do with nanoSQUIDs - superconducting quantum interference devices. They consist of a ring intersected by Josephson junctions. They have ultrathin insulating tunnel barriers around one nm thick. We can fabricate SQUIDs with a ZEISS Orion Nanofab. As the junctions are small, TEM is needed on ultra-thin samples. The crystal damage can then be further investigated. Site-specific preparation, essential for the relocation of the regions of interest, can only be done with a FIB-SEM. To achieve atomic resolution, the thinnest high-quality samples are crucial."
Prepare a TEM Lamella and Investigate NanoSQUIDS
STEM tilt series, brightfield STEM images are shown as one example of four signals collected in total simultaneously with the aSTEM detector using the special sample holder for STEM tomography. ZEISS GeminiSEM.
3D Tomography & Analytics
of a multi-layered metal system exemplified by a Canadian coin, typical FIB-SEM workflow combining milling, imaging, EBSD (top in this video) & EDS (bottom). Details, upper row from left to right: EBSD, copper, band contrast; EBSD, iron, Euler color; EBSD, nickel, IPF X. Lower row, from left to right: EDS maps of: copper, iron, nickel. ZEISS Crossbeam, ZEISS Atlas 5 with 3D Analytics module, EDS, EBSD.
Accelerating Nanoparticle Research
The measurement of nanoparticle sizes can be facilitated by an automated end-to-end microscopy workflow using SEM image acquisition and machine learning-based image segmentation. This task was usually done with watershed algorithms manually applied to an image series. Nowadays, this tedious work can be avoided by applying AI-based image processing. Surface sensitive high resolution FE-SEM imaging of ferrocerium nanoparticles (left) shows the first step of the workflow using a ZEISS GeminiSEM (Inlens SE detection, 2 kV acceleration voltage); the false-colored image shows the results of the image segmentation done with arivis Pro (right).