The innovations recognized by the Microscopy Today Innovation Awards advance microscopy in the areas of light microscopy, electron microscopy, and microanalysis. These innovations will make microscopy and microanalysis more powerful, more productive, and easier to accomplish.
June Lau of NIST, Yimea Zhu of Brookhaven National Lab, and Chunguang Jing, Eric Montgomery, Yubin Zhao, Wade Rush, Ao Liu, and Ilya Ponomarev of Euclid Labs are recognized for a relatively inexpensive pulsing device that converts an existing transmission electron microscope (TEM) into an ultrafast time-resolved TEM (UTEM). The electron beam produced in a conventional TEM is continuous (dc), so imaging and diffraction are accomplished in a static time-integrated manner. Now it is possible to unite the time domain with the spatial domain to create four-dimensional electron microscopy.
Compared to a time-resolved TEM relying on a sophisticated and expensive pump-probe femtosecond laser system, no laser is required. In addition, the RF pulser technology allows extended ranges of repetition rates and duty cycle tunability, which are not achievable in a laser-based UTEM. Compared to existing commercial systems, a lower price and retrofit compatibility make UTEM affordable for a broader scientific community.