 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Scientific and Technical Instruments |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founders | Ondrej Krivanek, Niklas Dellby |
| Headquarters | Kirkland, Washington |
| Parent | Bruker |
| Website | nion |
| Footnotes /references [1] | |
Nion is a manufacturer of scanning transmission electron microscopes (STEMs) based in Kirkland, Washington. [1]
In 1997, Ondrej Krivanek and Niklas Dellby were approached by Philip Batson from IBM TJ Watson Research Center to build a STEM aberration corrector. Krivanek was a research professor at University of Washington at the time, and decided to approach the project with a new company. [2] Krivanek and Dellby used a $120,000 grant from the Royal Society to build their first aberration corrector. Soon, Nion had constructed correctors for both spherical aberration and chromatic aberration which could be retrofitted into existing STEMs. The publicity gained from this achievement led to the scientific community calling for a microscope built from the ground up with aberration correction in mind, which could have potential at reaching resolutions below 0.5 Angstroms. [3]
After developing aberration correctors as modifications for microscopes, Nion developed their first microscope, called UltraSTEM 1, [4] a new aberration corrected microscope with resolution capability below one Angstrom. [5] [6]
In 2008, Nion unveiled the SuperSTEM 2, which provided 20 million times magnification. The SuperSTEM 2 was developed in collaboration with University of Liverpool, University of Glasgow, University of Leeds, and Daresbury Laboratory. [7]
In 2015, Nion delivered a Hermes Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope priced at £3.7 million to EPSRC in the UK. [8]
In 2020, co-founder of Nion, Ondrej Krivanek, shared the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience for work creating the first aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope with resolution below one ångstrom (0.1 nanometers). [9] [10] [5]
In January 2024, Nion was acquired by Bruker, which moved Bruker into the manufacture of electron microscopes. [11]
An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. They use electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing them to produce magnified images or electron diffraction patterns. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times smaller than that of visible light, electron microscopes have a much higher resolution of about 0.1 nm, which compares to about 200 nm for light microscopes. Electron microscope may refer to:
A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope.
Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) is a form of electron microscopy in which a material is exposed to a beam of electrons with a known, narrow range of kinetic energies. Some of the electrons will undergo inelastic scattering, which means that they lose energy and have their paths slightly and randomly deflected. The amount of energy loss can be measured via an electron spectrometer and interpreted in terms of what caused the energy loss. Inelastic interactions include phonon excitations, inter- and intra-band transitions, plasmon excitations, inner shell ionizations, and Cherenkov radiation. The inner-shell ionizations are particularly useful for detecting the elemental components of a material. For example, one might find that a larger-than-expected number of electrons comes through the material with 285 eV less energy than they had when they entered the material. This is approximately the amount of energy needed to remove an inner-shell electron from a carbon atom, which can be taken as evidence that there is a significant amount of carbon present in the sample. With some care, and looking at a wide range of energy losses, one can determine the types of atoms, and the numbers of atoms of each type, being struck by the beam. The scattering angle can also be measured, giving information about the dispersion relation of whatever material excitation caused the inelastic scattering.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a grid. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons with the sample as the beam is transmitted through the specimen. The image is then magnified and focused onto an imaging device, such as a fluorescent screen, a layer of photographic film, or a detector such as a scintillator attached to a charge-coupled device or a direct electron detector.
The Transmission Electron Aberration-Corrected Microscope (TEAM) Project is a collaborative research project between four US laboratories and two companies. The project's main activity is design and application of a transmission electron microscope (TEM) with a spatial resolution below 0.05 nanometers, which is roughly half the size of an atom of hydrogen.
A scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) is a type of transmission electron microscope (TEM). Pronunciation is [stɛm] or [ɛsti:i:ɛm]. As with a conventional transmission electron microscope (CTEM), images are formed by electrons passing through a sufficiently thin specimen. However, unlike CTEM, in STEM the electron beam is focused to a fine spot which is then scanned over the sample in a raster illumination system constructed so that the sample is illuminated at each point with the beam parallel to the optical axis. The rastering of the beam across the sample makes STEM suitable for analytical techniques such as Z-contrast annular dark-field imaging, and spectroscopic mapping by energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, or electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). These signals can be obtained simultaneously, allowing direct correlation of images and spectroscopic data.
Michael A. O'Keefe is a physicist who has worked in materials science and electron microscopy. He is perhaps best known for his production of the seminal computer code for modeling of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images; his software was later made available as part of the DeepView package for remote electron microscopy and control. O'Keefe's tutorial on theory and application of high-resolution electron microscope image simulation is available online.
Annular dark-field imaging is a method of mapping samples in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). These images are formed by collecting scattered electrons with an annular dark-field detector.
High-resolution transmission electron microscopy is an imaging mode of specialized transmission electron microscopes that allows for direct imaging of the atomic structure of samples. It is a powerful tool to study properties of materials on the atomic scale, such as semiconductors, metals, nanoparticles and sp2-bonded carbon. While this term is often also used to refer to high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy, mostly in high angle annular dark field mode, this article describes mainly the imaging of an object by recording the two-dimensional spatial wave amplitude distribution in the image plane, similar to a "classic" light microscope. For disambiguation, the technique is also often referred to as phase contrast transmission electron microscopy, although this term is less appropriate. At present, the highest point resolution realised in high resolution transmission electron microscopy is around 0.5 ångströms (0.050 nm). At these small scales, individual atoms of a crystal and defects can be resolved. For 3-dimensional crystals, it is necessary to combine several views, taken from different angles, into a 3D map. This technique is called electron tomography.
JEOL, Ltd. is a major developer and manufacturer of electron microscopes and other scientific instruments, industrial equipment and medical equipment.
Scanning confocal electron microscopy (SCEM) is an electron microscopy technique analogous to scanning confocal optical microscopy (SCOM). In this technique, the studied sample is illuminated by a focussed electron beam, as in other scanning microscopy techniques, such as scanning transmission electron microscopy or scanning electron microscopy. However, in SCEM, the collection optics are arranged symmetrically to the illumination optics to gather only the electrons that pass the beam focus. This results in superior depth resolution of the imaging. The technique is relatively new and is being actively developed.
A Low-voltage electron microscope (LVEM) is an electron microscope which operates at accelerating voltages of a few kiloelectronvolts (keV) or less. Traditional electron microscopes use accelerating voltages in the range of 10-1000 keV.
The Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) is an institute located on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich belonging to the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. It comprises three divisions: ER-C-1 “Physics of Nanoscale systems”, ER-C-2 “Materials Science and Technology” and ER-C-3 “Structural Biology”.
Knut W. Urban is a German physicist. He has been the Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich from 1987 to 2010.
Transmission electron microscopy DNA sequencing is a single-molecule sequencing technology that uses transmission electron microscopy techniques. The method was conceived and developed in the 1960s and 70s, but lost favor when the extent of damage to the sample was recognized.
Ondrej L. Krivanek is a Czech/British physicist resident in the United States, and a leading developer of electron-optical instrumentation. He won the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience in 2020 for his substantial innovations in atomic resolution electron microscopy.
Maximilian Haider is an Austrian physicist.
Harald Rose is a German physicist.
Peter David Nellist, is a British physicist and materials scientist, currently a professor in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He is noted for pioneering new techniques in high-resolution electron microscopy.
Aberration-Corrected Transmission Electron Microscopy (AC-TEM) is the general term for using electron microscopes where electro optical components are introduced to reduce the aberrations that would otherwise reduce the resolution of images. Historically electron microscopes had quite severe aberrations, and until about the start of the 21st century the resolution was quite limited, at best able to image the atomic structure of materials so long as the atoms were far enough apart. Theoretical methods of correcting the aberrations existed for some time, but could not be implemented in practice. Around the turn of the century the electron optical components were coupled with computer control of the lenses and their alignment; this was the breakthrough which led to significant improvements both in resolution and the clarity of the images. As of 2024 both correction of optical as well as chromatic aberrations is standard in many commercial electron microscopes. They are extensively used in many different areas of science.
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