Energy Dept. taps FEI for electron microscope

FEI Company will be the research and development partner in a project funded by the Energy Department to build the highest-resolution scanning and transmission electron microscope to date.

FEI of Hillsboro Ore., which has several research and development centers in North America and Europe, was chosen by the five laboratories tasked by the Energy Department to develop the microscope, FEI officials said.

The project calls for a new microscope that will enable direct observation and analysis of nanostructures at an unprecedented resolution of 0.5 Angstrom, or about one-third the size of a carbon atom.

The participating laboratories are Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.
Aberration corrected electron microscopy technology will be the focus of the project.