Electron Microscopy of Nanoscale Materials as a Driving Force for the TEAM Project

Advanced electron microscopes show us unprecedented views of materials and their unusual behavior on the nanoscale. However, until recently, electron microscopes have remained limited by unavoidable aberrations in round electromagnetic lenses. The TEAM (Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope) project was initiated as a collaborative effort to redesign the electron microscope around aberration corrected optics. The vision for the TEAM project is the idea of providing a sample space for electron scattering experiments in a tunable electron optical environment by removing some of the constraints that have limited electron microscopy until now. The resulting improvements in spatial, spectral and temporal resolution, the increased space around the sample, and the possibility of exotic electron-optical settings will enable new types of experiments. The TEAM microscope will feature unique corrector elements for spherical and chromatic aberrations, a novel AFM-inspired specimen stage, a high-brightness gun and numerous other innovations that will extend resolution down to the half-Angstrom level. This talk will highlight some recent discoveries in nanoscale materials science using high resolution imaging and dynamic observations. Examples will include observations of the relationship between particle size and melting point, the direct measurement of the mechanism and rate of Brownian motion of liquid inclusions inside a solid matrix, and the critical need for 3D tomography to understand the shape and unique behavior of precipitates at grain boundaries in solids. Finally, this presentation will show some first results demonstrating the extraordinary performance of the TEAM 0.5 microscope and sketch an outline of opportunities for the TEAM project to meet future scientific challenges.