UM-StL CNS Microscopy Image and Spectroscopy Tech (MIST) Lab

(formerly CME Scanned Tip and Electron Image Lab)
...in words of Jonathon Swift...
a Brobdingnagian MetroLink to Lilliput
...facilitating...
Work and Play in the NanoWorlds of Missouri

[New] [Overview] [Index] [Images] [Research] [Fires] [Facilities] [Who Now] [Who Else] [Papers] [Sites] [Mail]

New:

Here are some notes on collaborative software, and on modeling projects in the works.

Here are some tools for virtual microscopy, and notes on nanoscience practicals.

Here's the official Center for NanoScience MIST lab homepage.

Below find the google groups link for our moderated intra-lab technical forum. If you'd like to be registered for access, send a request through the link below and/or contact the local moderator.

	Scanned Tip and Electron Image Lab
	Browse Archives at groups.google.com

Notes on: a particle's travel-diary (22apr), regional nanoscience (5may), & niche networks (16may2006).

Try risk assessment, cold food, mag-lenses, and a web-journal for empirical observation reports.

Fix-up the periodic table with springs , or ponder multi-scale times, tales of C/Si & O, and nanoeducation.

Lattice fringe practicals and a nano-cluster analysis weblab for YOUR data and classes.

Notes on molecule spatial harmonics, diffraction in action, and a 2005 intro-chem adventure.

Some on-line nano-detective challenges/tools, jmol tests, and some recent outreach.

A nano-microscopy field calculator may be found here.

Tutorial notes on the r2-loop and covariance, plus some recent submissions.

Attempts at a "reduced-jargon" list of research highlights and developing stories.

Some 2003 proposal summaries (A, B) and regional nano-alliance notes.

Try exploring a thinned disc or a grid with space dust on the nanoscale! Related rubrics.

A 3x3 reduced version of the lab's poster for NSF's NNIN meeting.

IF your system supports the Adobe Atmosphere (beta-test) plugin, visit our 3D weblab.

The Central States Microscopy and MicroAnalysis Society Spring Meeting at UM-StL on Friday 7 June 2002.

How about a three-part (web/lab)-based course on emergent microscopy practicals?

Developing e-print topics include lattices in 3D, fast airtracks, silicon nanopits, and red giant onions.

Notes on some graduate research projects that have put our 'scopes to use.

Web version of our Tech Fair 2000 presentation for St. Louis' Technology Gateway Alliance.

What is direct-space crystallography via stereo lattice imaging [hint]? More here.

Draft (p1,2; PDF) of Wentao's paper for the 1999 Microscope Society of America Conference.

In Winter 1999, both weekend SEM (p307), and Bio-EM (b392), courses will be offered!

The TEM course this Fall 1998 (Phys 308) now has 2 sections. Stop by for a visit in M101!

Check out our Engleman workshop on using flashbacks to save a mars-mission crew.

Check out our microscopy course overview, as well as sem, tem and spm course pages.

Draft description of a possible summer workshop series targeted toward analytical service clients rather than operators.

The complex-color view below of quantum-mechanical tunnelling with standing wave on the left, barrier in the middle, and a wave past the barrier on the right is much more compact than the complex-plane animation of the same process. The latter, of course, is not even an option when it comes to viewing complex images, such as 2D Fourier transforms or optical wave-field cross-sections!

Selected images from "Play and Work in the NanoWorlds of St. Louis".

Nuclei recoil on alpha-decay, creating etchable damage tracks in mica.

Check out the reciprocal world course stuff in prep for next semester.

Searching with IR for 200nm defects in silicon? Lucio's 1.8MB review note in PDF is here.

We now have on-line group-meeting servers like this one here. Write pf for login details.

One image from a 3D series of HREM images of Tungsten Carbide/Oxide Crystals by Wentao Qin.

Three abstracts for the Winter 1998 AAPT Conference.

Our CME page & some nature nanophotography.

If you do VRML, nano-visit the 0.6MB surface of a polymer decorated by Kevin Saff.

Tabletop tip vibrations are less than 0.07 nm on the 250-ton slab in our new "triple bi-story" CME site!

Try two-ton TEM turnovers today?

Dave's materials astronomy note on presolar red-giant graphite-onion core/diameter ratios.

Check out deBroglie's electrons & some odd TEM facts.

Try your hand at focussing and astigmating a high resolution electron microscope.

Last modified on 13 Apr 2005. Section(s) modified: 1

To list some current outside web-links which point in to the scanned tip and electron image lab stuff at this site...

Wuzzle: If this is what reciprocal space looks like, switching to direct space finds what? If you do VRML, hike the 182kB reciprocal-lattice of this mystery crystal for clues.

Puzzler: What is this a HREM image of? Hint: 10-fold Scattering Centers Orthorhombically Arrayed in an Image 64 Angstroms wide!

Phyzzlers: What does Coulomb's law have to do with the "line of no contrast" in TEM images of tiny defects in crystals? Check out this charge visualization to find out.

Note: This page contains original material. If you choose to echo in print or on the web, permission from us (as well as a citation) may be appropriate. { Thanks. /philf :) }

OVERVIEW

This lab began as the UM-StL component of the St. Louis Consortium for Microstructural Studies in the late 1980's, and continues that Consortium's objective of developing and offering advanced techniques for "getting small", and doing microscopic detective work on materials in the size range between microns and atoms. This lab: (i) brought the first scanning probe microscopes (tunneling and force) to the area, (ii) proposed for and then guided the building of a triple bi-story building, the first in Missouri designed from the ground up for atomic-resolution imaging, (iii) organized the first meeting of the MissOuri NanoAlliance (with funds from the governor's research alliance), and (iv) continues to manage the only atom-resolution (sub-2A point to point) transmission electron microscope facility in Missouri. Always part of a regional "Center without Walls", it is also the operating unit of the UM-StL Center for Molecular Electronics' Microstructural Studies Facility most directly linked to present and prospective Industry Sponsorships for the Center.

Index

Overview
Image(s) of the month
Long Term Projects
Fire-Fighting Projects
Facilities
Immediate Members of the Group
Non-local or Previous Members of the Group
Recent Papers and/or Abstracts
Other Interesting Microscopy Sites
mail to author(s)

Image(s) of the month

Microscope Acronyms: AFM=contact repulsive force; TM=tapping mode force; STM=scanning tunneling; HREM=electron phase contrast TEM; CTEM=conventional TEM.

1996
Feb'96		Simulated lateral displacement image of a soft cosine ripple (AFM), and some intergrown hemispherical bumps (air-STM).{CS,PF}
Jan'96		HREM showing 2D graphite starflakes in the core of a micron-sized presolar graphite onion, likely carried to us on the backs of photons from the near-surface of a carbon-rich red giant.{KB,DD,QW,PF}

1995
Dec'95		Raw STM image of a gold/palladium(Au/Pd)-on-graphite specimen in air, showing what may be Au/Pd clustering on a carbon atom lattice.{QW,CS}
Nov'95		CTEM of oxygen precipitates (& related defects) in VLSI silicon after 2^n hours growth, for comparison with infrared laser scattering profiles.{LM}
Oct'95		TM_AFM images of 0.13 nm Steps on "fresh-epitaxial" (100) Silicon in air.{LF}
Sep'95		AFM video of an integrated circuit memory chip, with micron-sized cube for scale.{RA}
Aug'95		AFM micrographs of sickle cell platelets provided by the microscopist.{RA}
Jul '95		TM_AFM images, with many field-widths for roughness spectroscopy, of widely-spaced atomic steps on (100) silicon in air.{LF}
Jun'95		Simulated HREM images of randomly-oriented atom-thick graphite flakes, suggesting in direct space the remarkable features of diffraction from 2D crystals.{KB,PF}
May'95		"Nano-wheat" in some "nano-valleys", or water on mica?{LF}
Apr'95		An etched nuclear particle track in mica, probably from natural fission of uranium contained therein.{LF}
Mar'95		HREM of ordered icosahedra in annealed TiMn quasicrystal, shown in 10-fold symmetry down P2(001).{LL,PF}
Feb'95		Some strange rimmed pits in argon-irradiated mica, only a molecule or so deep (and high) but 10nm wide!{LF}
Jan'95		Playing "Where's Crystaldo" with Bayesian background subtraction of noise from images.{JT,LF,PF}

Images of Months Past

Long-Term Projects Include:

People: Analytical Support and Research
- Two-Armed Physicists and University-Based Management by Results
- The Ethics of Analytical Support
Stuff: Materials of Interest
- Oxygen Precipitates as a Probe of Radial Gradients in VLSI Silicon
- Native Oxide Nucleation & Growth on Single Crystal Si
- Plasma-Enhanced Vapor-Deposited Iron Carbide/Nitride Films
- Scanning Force Microscopy of Nuclear Track Pits on Mica
- The Cross-Section Structure of Bonded Silicon-On-Insulator
- Scanned Probe Study of Conductive Polymers and Oxides
- Hydrogen Pinning at Dislocations in Cu, Nb and Pd
- Materials Astronomy & Study of Circumstellar Dusts in the Lab, including...
- Interplanetary Dust in the TEM - Diverse Materials from the Early Solar System
- PreSolar Interstellar Silicon Carbon and Diamonds in the TEM
- Imaging the Two-Dimensional Crystal Cores of Interstellar Graphite Onions
Instruments: Experimental Techniques/Methods
- Stationary Tip Images and Time-Domain Noise in the SPM
- Lattice Distortion in the SPM
- Monitoring Scanned Probe Tip Shape with Nuclear Track Pits
- Lateral Displacement Microscopy
- Capacitance and Conductivity Imaging in the Scanning Force Microscope
- HREM Imaging of Two-Dimensional (i.e. Atom-Thick) Crystals
Data: Inference, Statistical and Otherwise
- Bayesian Background Subtraction
- Roughness Spectroscopy
- Electron Phase Contrast Focus & Astigmate (EPCfocus) - The Arcade Game?
- Inverting Pit Profiles to get Tip Shape Envelopes and Touch Maps
- Single Crystal Analysis of Selected Area Electron Diffraction Patterns (SXTL)
- Azimuthal Averaging of Electron Diffraction Patterns

Fire-Fighting Projects Include:

Study of Mineral Nanoparticles for Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Quantifying the Optical Precipitate Profiling of Defects in VLSI Silicon
Scanned Probe Microscopy of Conductive Polymers

Facilities:

Philips EM430ST 300 kV high resolution/analytical transmission electron microscope (TEM), with sub-2A point-resolution pole-piece, STEM system, double-tilt low-blank stages, Gatan electron energy loss (EELS) spectrometer, and EDAX thin window energy-dispersive X-ray (EDS) detector.

Digital Instruments NanoScope III multimode scanning probe microscope (STM, AFM, LFM, TMFM, ECSTM, ECAFM)

Amray 2000 scanning electron microscope (SEM) with Tracor X-ray system.

Hitachi H-600 100kV transmission electron microscope

Cambridge S240 scanning electron microscope (SEM) with Link X-ray system

Cambridge Stereoscan 250 scanning electron microscope

Digital Instruments Nanoscope I scanning tunneling microscope

Specimen preparation equipment: Balzer's freeze-fracture system and evaporator, Kenney vacuum evaporator, Buehler wafering saw, Gatan disc cutter, dimpler and ion mill, SouthBay tripod polisher, Hummer sputter coater

Access to several Silicon Graphics and Sun Workstations

Windows NT and 98 computers with clock speeds up to 700MHz, 384MB RAM

Agfa T2500 paper/negative scanner for 12 bit/channel 2500dpi images

MacIntosh PowerPC

Hewlett Packard ScanJet IIc scanner

640x480x8 bits image digitizer

Mitsubishi Color Video Copy Processor

Codonics np1600 graphic network color printer with postscript option

Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4000 printer with postscript cartridge

Hewlett Packard DeskJet 870Cse color printer

Synoptics Semper 6.2 image processing sofrware package and board