Jens Rafaelsen, Applications Engineer, EDAX

During a recent trip to our Draper lab in Utah for a training class, I got a first-hand look at Matt’s new lab partner (https://edaxblog.com/2017/02/14/my-new-lab-partner/). I must admit that I am a little envious of his new microscope and how easily you get great looking images (even at low acceleration voltage or high beam current) compared to the systems we have in our Mahwah lab. However, I must also admit that he needed an upgrade a lot more than we did. While his old XL has been very reliable (and still seems to be, even after moving it to another room), it was always a bit of a worry conducting a training class with only one microscope available and one that was at end of service life at that.

Around the time when Matt got his new microscope we also had an addition to our Mahwah lab as seen in the picture below:

OK, it’s definitely not an ARM or a TITAN, it only goes to 120kV, it’s not quite as new and fancy as Matt’s microscope, and the firmware might read 1994 when you hit the ON button, but it’s still good to have a TEM in the building once again. One of the things that’s great about older scientific instruments is that they often include full vacuum and wiring diagrams, schematics, and troubleshooting directions. Not so great: pressure readings in arbitrary numbers… I did some creative plumbing and mounted extra gauges on the line of the microscope gauges so now I know that a pressure reading in the buffer tank of 26 corresponds to roughly 10-1 mbar and that the camera chamber goes down to the mid 10-5 mbar. As an added bonus, several people in the building have been around long enough to have experience with the CM12 both as users and service and have had their memories jogged for how to run and align it. This also spurred the comment: “That’s right, this is why I decided to get out of field service…”.

Having had very limited TEM experience it’s been a bit of a learning curve for me but I think it’s getting there. There’s still a lot to learn when it comes to fine tuning of the instrument, diffraction, and aligning for dark field imaging, but at least I am able to get bright field images at over 500k magnification without spending too much time. And some of the images actually have somewhat decent resolution and recognizable features at that:

Of course, a lot of what we do at EDAX doesn’t really require great resolution or the newest instruments. While it’s always nice to have pretty pictures to go along with things, the X-rays don’t really care much about your astigmatism or spot size (unless you are trying to map of course). But there’s a significant difference in what you see in your spectra whether your electrons are hitting the sample with 15 kV or 120 kV. There are also very different considerations and limitations between a SEM and a TEM when it comes to actually mounting the detector, designing collimators, and even what materials can be used. With that being said, I hope that with my “new” lab partner we will move things along so that we can show you new applications, software, and hardware specifically for the TEM in the near future.