Installing the first Stream system in Singapore at the Nanyang Technological University

Installing the first Stream system in Singapore at the Nanyang Technological University

by | Dec 23, 2020 | Interview, Partnerships, Stream

Standing next to the recently installed Stream system: from left, Dr. Anastasia Shebanova, Dr. Martial Duchamp and Jeffrey George from the Nanyang Technological University

We are happy to announce that the first ever Stream system in Singapore has recently been installed! For this event we interviewed Dr. Martial Duchamp from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. In this interview, we discussed NTU’s advanced microscopy facility and the various applications that LPEM users are interested in, as well as how our Stream system has greatly benefited their research.  

Can you tell me a bit about the microscopy facility at the Nanyang Technological University?

The Nanyang Technological University has a shared microscopy facility called FACTS (Facility for Analysis Characterization Testing & Simulation) that specializes in characterization in the field of electron microscopy and x-ray techniques. FACTS provides state-of-the-art electron microscopes and X-ray instruments as well as the expertise to operate them to all of NTU and beyond.

This shared facility was created around 20 years ago. Four years ago, we had an extension of the facility, and got two aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes as well as a new building where these TEMs were installed. The first TEM is a JEOL JEM-ARM200F, and the second is the JEOL JEM-GrandARM that is both probe- and image-corrected. Moreover, we have some local technicians and engineers who take care of these microscopes and make sure the facility is running well.

What type of applications are Stream users at the facility interested in?

Users of the facility are interested in a wide range of applications. In regards to LPEM users, we are using the DENSsolutions Stream system to study the liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) aspect of biological systems. Specifically, we are interested in the process called coacervation, which involves starting with a mixed phase of polymer or proteins dispersed in a solvent, and by changing certain conditions like the pH, temperature or salt concentration you can go from this diluted phase to a solid phase via phase separation. We are particularly interested in phase separation in order to understand how we go from these diluted solutions of drugs or proteins to solid matter.

Aside from liquid TEM, I am also interested in using in situ and operando TEM to observe 2D materials and the evolution of these materials versus temperature, as well as solar cells and batteries.

Can you tell us who won the grant to acquire the Stream system?

Associate Professor Ali Miserez, the lead PI of the project titled “Phase Separation-Regulated Life, In and Outside of Cells”, was awarded the Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 3 grant worth 8.5 million Singaporean dollars. This research programme aims to closely integrate the tools of cell biology and colloidal biochemistry with the framework developed in the materials science of polymer science, soft matter, and complex fluids. The goal is to unravel LLPS-mediated functional organization across multiple biological length scales. Part of this grant was used to acquire the Stream system.

This 5-year project started last summer, and we are just starting to employ new researchers. In fact, some students already started a couple months ago and we expect to have some more people joining.

What particular features of Stream attracted you to the system?

For our experiments, it was essential to find a way to control the flux of the liquid within the liquid cell in order to look at reactions or processes occurring on the location of the electron beam. This is something we were unable to do with previous generations of holders and chips. The DENSsolutions Stream system is the only system that allows you to completely control the liquid flux. This unique capability is what intrigued us most about the system.

Moreover, as a result of the Nano-cell’s special inlet-outlet design, we are also able to fully control the pressure and liquid thickness. Other features that we found very attractive include the control systems like the heating control unit and the pressure-based pump, which are considerably more elaborate compared to what we had in the past.

In your experience so far, how have you found the Stream system?

The assembly in regards to the closing of the cell is quite straightforward, and so far we have not had any leakage issues. Just by closing the cell, it becomes airtight, which is a great advantage of the system. Moreover, what I really appreciate about the system is the ability to have complete control over the flow of the liquid.

Dr. Mihaela Albu

Dr. Martial Duchamp
Assistant Professor | Nanyang Technological University

Dr. Martial Duchamp is an Assistant Professor in the school of Materials Science and Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His research interests include the development of innovative operando TEM methods for application to solar cells, batteries and fuel cells devices, as well as obtaining a fundamental understanding of 2D materials to reveal their unprecedented electrical properties at local scale.

Learn more about Stream:

Stream product page

Discover Martial Duchamp’s publications:

 
Martial's publications

Discover publications made possible by Stream:

publications

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Izasa Scientific and DENSsolutions announce new partnership

Izasa Scientific and DENSsolutions announce new partnership

by | May 6, 2020 | Partnerships

DENSsolutions is proud to partner with Izasa Scientific to serve the Spanish and Portugese market. We have been active in Spain for a number of years and in those years we started to build a good relationship with the expert and passionate team of Izasa Scientific. Now we have recently officially signed our partnership, which we are sure will benefit the TEM community in Spain and Portugal. Offering them cutting-edge In Situ technology with the best possible local support.

“During conversations and cooperation with DENSsolutions on specific projects in Spain, we became convinced about the perfect alignment between our companies. The technology offered by DENSsolutions fits perfectly with our product portfolio linked to Electron Microscopy. Now, we can offer our clients a complete on-site solution by introducing the DENSsolutions systems that complement the most advanced Electron Microscopes and direct acquisition cameras on the market.
We are convinced that the association between our companies will end in a clear benefit for the scientific community by facilitating access to the most complete solution for “in-situ” Electron Microscopy on the market. We believe that DENSsolutions is without a doubt the best partner in this field.
This good alignment, even before formalizing this agreement, which we are pleased to announce, has led to joint efforts, such as the recent webinar, which attracted considerable interest from the scientific community, and which we invite you to watch on the Izasa Scientific website.”
Carlos Arribas, General Manager at Izasa Scientific
“In the last 5 years, DENSsolutions has had the opportunity to deliver in situ heating and biasing solutions to some of the leading TEM laboratories in Spain. We also saw more and more requests for quotations for our Climate and Stream systems so we decided to start looking for a distributor in Spain and Portugal. We already had some contact with Izasa Scientific in a few projects and we got very impressed with their installed base and more importantly with the commitment of the employees of Isaza towards their customers. The core values of DENSsolutions are: “we care”, “we innovate” and “we deliver” and this is exactly what we found with the people in Izasa.
So I fully agree with Carlos Arribas, the General Manager of Isaza Scientific, when he states that there is good alignment between the two companies. It was clearly shown indeed during our joint recent webinar.
DENSsolutions will keep pushing the technology envelope for total in situ solutions based on our state of the art Nano-Chip, Nano-Reactor and Nano-Cell MEMS based sample carriers.
In order to support our customers in every part of the world, we believe that a true partnership with our distributors is extremely important and after careful consideration we decided that this true partnership for Spain and Portugal can be realized with Isaza Scientific in the most beneficial way for our customers.
Isaza Scientific brings a lot of value for DENSsolutions as they have a very extensive installed base in Spain and Portugal. But more importantly the people in Isaza Scientific really have the knowledge and drive to understand our customers’ needs.
Last but not least: with the completion of the distribution agreement with Isaza Scientific we now “cover” the whole of Europe.”
Ben Bormans, CEO -DENSsolutions

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Installing the first Climate system in Australia at the University of Sydney

Installing the first Climate system in Australia at the University of Sydney

by | Feb 27, 2020 | Climate, Partnerships

Standing next to the recently installed Climate G+ system: from left, Keita Nomoto, Lizhuo Wang and Dr. Hongwei Liu from the Australian Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis

Recently, we celebrated the installation of the first Climate G+ system ever in Australia. For this event we interviewed Dr. Bhatia at the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis that oversees the Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis core research facility at the University of Sydney. Earlier, he was key in the decision to purchase the world’s first Lightning STEM stage which established his relationship with DENSsolutions and ultimately lead to the installation of the Climate G+ In Situ TEM platform.

In this interview, we discussed the research needs of his facility and how they will benefit from the solutions designed and manufactured by DENSsolutions.

Can you tell us a bit about Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis?

Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis is the central microscopy facility at the University of Sydney. The University of Sydney is Australia’s first university and regularly ranks in the World’s top 50 universities.

We are a multi-user facility that services both the entire university as well as people from across Australia through the Microscopy Australia access scheme. Microscopy Australia provides access to member universities throughout Australia.

This means that we need to provide highly reliable, flexible solutions as we offer our instruments to users with a broad range of applications and skill levels.

Can you give us some examples of applications that your users are involved in?

Our researchers interests are many and varied. Some of the areas that are relevant to the new Climate system include:

  • Hydrogen generation
  • Methane breakdown as a consequence of global warming
  • Environmental corrosion of metals

It is hard to know what projects it will be used for as many users haven’t even presented themselves yet. But that is the point of buying versatile equipment.

In Australia, it is normal for funding for large equipment purchases to come from research grants. Can you tell us who won the grant to acquire the Climate?

A team from the Chemical Engineering Department working on catalysts were responsible for the bulk of the funding. Their contributions from their grant were topped up by the Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (ACMM). ACMM supports the operation of the Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis facility.

What features of the Climate attracted you to this particular system and how do you see the DENSsolutions in situ system benefitting your research?

As a core facility working with researchers from a range of different fields we needed a system with flexibility to cater to their different interests.
Other features of the Climate that that we found attractive were the ability to interchange parts and the ease with which individual components could be replaced. The ability to perform dynamic mixing of gases provided an added degree of versatility.
All these factors contributed to what we considered to be a future-proof design that best suited our facility and the range of potential experiments of our users.
The ability to investigate dynamic processes and to be able to observe these processes in real-time was also important to us. By being able to observe the entire process takes any guesswork out of the equation and means that we don’t miss any critical steps where changes might occur.

How popular has the system been to date?

The system was only installed in November. So far, we have only had three operators and a technician trained, bearing in mind the Christmas, New Year break. We do however intend to train more operators in the near future and can see the Climate being an important research tool.

In your experience so far, how have you found the Climate system?

The installation process was quite straightforward.
The fact that the software uses the same platform as the Lightning system that we already have abbreviated the familiarisation process. The software itself is very easy to use and the system as a whole is very intuitive.
We have only performed some basic measurements so far, but are looking forward to getting into some detailed experiments in the near future.

Learn more about our Climate system and Nano-Reactor:

climate product page

Discover publications made possible by our Climate system:

publications

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The ESTEEM3 project: Enabling Science and Technology through European Electron Microscopy.

The ESTEEM3 project: Enabling Science and Technology through European Electron Microscopy.

by | Feb 26, 2020 | Partnerships

ESTEEM3 group members at the last GA meeting in Toulouse

Since the beginning of the ESTEEM3 project, in January 2019, DENSsolutions has been involved as one of the industrial partners. Our aim in this project is to promote and improve in-situ TEM technology by communicating and collaborating with ESTEEM3 partners in solving scientific problems from basic methodology development to characterising materials related (but not limited) to ICT, energy, health, and transport. Now, being in the 14th month of the project, we want to share some background of the project and see what has been achieved thus far. We interviewed Lucie Guilloteau who is the project manager of ESTEEM3.

What is the main goal of ESTEEM3?

The main goal is to provide transnational access (TA) to the leading European state-of-the-art electron microscopy research infrastructures, to researchers in the private and public domain. During the previous ESTEEM projects, 1 and 2, we have been able to build a strong infrastructure and develop procedures that now enable us to connect many users to labs all over Europe.

On our website, we make it easy for a wide range of academic and industrial research communities to submit their application. Each proposal will be assessed by a committee of renowned and external scientists in microscopy and materials science on 3 points: Scientific quality of the proposal, demonstration of the need for the use of the advanced infrastructure, and potential impact for academic or industrial innovation.

The selected proposals will be granted access to required facilities, made available by one of the 15 labs in our consortium. Think of sample preparation, TEM study and data analysis.

Can institutes outside of the EU also apply?

Yes, access for user groups where the majority of users are not working in an EU or associated country is allowed, but these groups are limited to 20% of the total amount of ‘units of access’ provided under the grant.
The project started in January 2019 and will run until December 2022. During this time period, our goal is to provide a total of 50 applicants from outside of the EU access to one of our 15 labs.
At the moment, we already have successfully provided access to 19 groups so we are ahead of schedule. If we look at the amount of access we provided overall, including user groups inside of the EU, which take up 80% of the total amount of units of access provided, we are at more than 30% of our project goals.

Who are the people behind the project?

The project is funded by the European Research and Innovation program Horizon 2020 under the Excellent Science pillar and coordinated by Prof. Peter van Aken of the Max Planck institute. The consortium list can be found here.

What other things does ESTEEM3 make possible?

Next to providing free access to the best European facilities and expertise in electron microscopy for the study of materials, ESTEEM3 members and SMEs also develop joint research activities. The goal of these activities is to develop new techniques in electron microscopy, study materials applied to ICT, energy, health and transport sectors and to improve automation and data study. And the last part of ESTEEM3 concerns education and training where we organise schools, workshops and webinars on electron microscopy.

“DENSsolutions is honored to be the industrial partner specializing in in-situ technology. We will contribute to the project by jointly hosting schools, advanced workshops and webinars and direct research programs in in-situ methodology development with ESTEEM3 partners. Aligned with ESTEEM3’s target to establish a strategic leadership in electron microscopy to guide future developments, we also aim to promote in-situ electron microscopy to the widest research community at large.”
Dr. Dan Zhou, Applications Scientist and main contact person for ESTEEM3 at DENSsolutions

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Quantum Design Italy and DENSsolutions announce new partnership

Quantum Design Italy and DENSsolutions announce new partnership

by | Jan 28, 2020 | Partnerships

DENSsolutions is proud to partner with Quantum Design Italy  to serve the Italian market. Quantum Design has been one of the leading European distributors of high-tech instrumentation for scientific, academic and industrial research for over 45 years. DENSsolutions will strengthen their TEM portfolio with innovative MEMS based In Situ solutions and together we can build and strengthen relationships with research groups in Italy.

“Since the first discussion with Ben, this felt like a perfect match! As a manufacturer of high-end scientific instruments and a distributor with a global network, Quantum Design is always looking for partnerships with companies that share the same passion for science and innovation. In the team of DENSsolutions we found people with the very same drive as us to bring the highest quality equipment into any lab. Both teams aim to provide scientists with tools to make their research possible, turn their ideas into results and work in close collaboration with them. That’s what both teams do, every single day. Together, we can be even closer to researchers, we love to think that this partnership will benefit mainly our customers (but we ourselves will also have a lot fun!).”

Diego Vitaglione, Managing Director – QD Italy

“Signing a distribution agreement with Quantum Design Italy S.r.l for DENSsolutions was a very special occasion for me. I am sure that working with the team in QD Italy will be a big pleasure for our team in Delft as everyone I met was very knowledgeable, energetic and passionate about their business; at DENSsolutions we like people who are passionate about Science and Business. As an added bonus, we signed this agreement in Rome which is my favourite city for many, many reasons. Rome has been a
melting pot for people and cultures for 2500 years and as DENSsolutions wants to truly become a global company, having the people of QD Italy on board brings some very good “global” genes into our company. At DENSsolutions we will work hard to make this partnership with QD Italy a big success.”
Ben Bormans, CEO -DENSsolutions
 

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Uppsala University in Sweden expands its TEM capabilities using DENSsolutions In Situ systems

Uppsala University in Sweden expands its TEM capabilities using DENSsolutions In Situ systems

by | Nov 21, 2019 | Chemistry, Partnerships, Wildfire

A DENSsolutions Wildfire double tilt (DT) system with a biasing expansion has been installed at the Uppsala University, Sweden.

Sharath Kumar Manjeshwar Sathyanath and Lars Riekehr checking the new Wildfire holder.

“It will be mainly used by the solid state chemistry group in order to investigate temperature behavior of alloys ”

 

Lars Riekehr – senior research engineer from the Ångström Laboratory in the Department of Engineering Sciences at Uppsala University.

Applications

The Wildfire DT system will be used by the group to research the phase transitions in metals and solar cells.

“After the installation the system was directly tested using solar cell samples. The researchers wanted to see how chemical inhomogeneities in the absorber layer would behave upon heating.”

In particular, Riekehr is pleased with certain features of the Wildfire system, such as the extra lateral shift on heating, the bulging and the stability. Additionally, the Biasing expansion will allow for precise operating voltage control.

He added that he was looking forward to the prospect of being able to offer in situ experiment results to anyone in the department who might need them.

Thank you for reading

To learn more about our Wildfire system:

wildfire product page

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