Scanning Electron Microscopy Blog

A bit of fun from the folks at ASPEX. They make small scale SEMs and have recently been running a "Send us your sample" promotion where potential customers send in samples and get a free image taken using one of the ASPEX microscopes.

From ASPEX:

"Starting this week, ASPEX is running a "Name That Sample" contest. We have posted a couple SEM scans of an object and we're looking for people to guess what object was scanned. The first person to leave a comment with the correct answer will win a 1GB ASPEX USB stick. This week's contest will end Friday at 11:59PM EST, so get your guesses in by then! The winner will be notified by email.

There will be more mystery samples to come and prizes to be won if you miss this week's deadline."

Sounds like a bit of fun to me on the day before Thanksgiving...

The ASU-Ask A Biologist program is putting on an "Ugly Bug" contest. Go to their website and vote for the ugliest bug.

All of the images appear to be colorized SEM images.

Great way to get the kiddos into science that won't take longer than 5 minutes!

According to EETimes.com, FEI Co., manufacturer of electron microscopes, has sold it's desktop SEM line to Phenom-World, a subsidiary of NTS Group B.V. (NTS) of Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

The desktop SEM has recently become a new tool available to users of SEM who don't need a high-end research level instrument. If all that is required is relatively low magnification imaging and you don't have time for a learning curve a desktop SEM is the way to go.

The article also made mention of the recent financial health of FEI Co, which is good news.

ASPEX, who specialize in small footprint SEMs that are geared for automated particle analysis, now offer an dry rough pumping option. This is useful if you want a cleaner and quieter alternative to the usual oil rotary pumps normally installed with an SEM. You might want this if you need an SEM in a clean facility or in a confined space where the noise/fumes/heat associated with an oil rotary pump become an issue.

As a followup on what was presented at M&M this summer, JEOL is formally introducing their correlative SEM/LM tool the ClairScope(TM).

The press release is here.

The product sheet is also available here

I haven't seen or heard of a similar SEM arrangement and it looks interesting. I'm not a biologist so this is maybe a silly question, but knowing how the SEM side of the instrument is going to work, how do you keep cells alive while introducing stains to increase the BSE contrast? Also, what is the cost of the sample dishes (and are they reusable) since they provide only a 0.25 mm2 SEM observable area. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who knows more about these instruments since I don't have a lot of details at this point.

Not sure if this really qualifies as SEM news, but Brookhaven National Lab, along with Hitachii have developed a Scanning microscope (technically a scanning transmission electron microscope, or STEM) capable of atomic resolution.

While the terms "gunshot residue" and "fully automated" should, in my opinion, never be uttered in the same sentence, FEI has a product available to do just that.

Learn a bit more about it here or here.