News

All of our new brochures feature a cover image which has been made available by our customers. Why did we select them?

The image was acquired just before the launch of the improved heating chip. The sample is a gold-palladium nanoparticle imaged at 1000 °C on a Thermo Scientific Titan equipped with an image corrector and our Wildfire in situ heating system. We selected this image because it shows that the native resolution and drift rate of your microscope are not affected at all by the extreme temperatures that are possible with the DENSsolutions Wildfire system.

Courtesy of EMAT, Antwerp (BE)

Flexoelectrics: the sample imaged is Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3 – SrTiO3 (aka BNT-ST). It went through a thermal treatment directly on the chip in order to obtain the desired properties, then it was imaged at 800 °C with electric fields ranging from -220 kV/cm to +220 kV/cm. Images were acquired using the Lightning HB+ on a JEOL ARM. The image was chosen because it explains why we need to have the flexibility to reach extreme conditions, both in terms of temperature and electric fields. The sample showed, unexpectedly, nano-domains  at temperatures much higher than previously reportedl.

Courtesy of Leopoldo Molina-Luna, TU Darmstadt (DE)

The image shows a Pd particle imaged system at 500 C in 1 bar of He/CO. The image was recorded with our Climate G+ on a Thermo Scientific Titan. Although having 1 bar inside the Nano-Reactor may lead to think that the native resolution of your microscope will be affected, the image demonstrates an information transfer of 55 pm. Thus, the Climate enables users to observe the finest dynamical structural changes in catalytic processes..

Courtesy of Prof. Wang, Zheijang University (CN)

The image captured from a video shows a protein, ferritin, imaged with our in situ liquid solution on a JEOL 2110F equipped with a direct electron detector camera. The protein has an outer diameter of 12 nm and we can image it with a resolution not too far from 1 nm. We can observe brownian motion, rotation, agglomeration and fusion, thanks to the stability and reliability of our in situ liquid solution.

Courtesy of Prof. Battaglia, UCL (UK)

Materials with switchable polarization are indispensable in memory devices, sensors, actuators, and transducers. In this publication Leopoldo Molina-Luna et al reported an unexpected phenomenon, the appearance of domain-like nanoregions (DLNRs) at extreme temperatures. The origin of the phenomenon can be ascribed to flexoelectricity, an intrinsic property of dielectric materials that can generate polarization under a strain induced by compositional gradients. To examine the origin of the DLNRs experimentally, the authors applied electric fields up to ±22 kV/mm at 800 °C and observed the dynamics by means of high resolution imaging. This discovery opens up a new exciting science and will certainly motivate the study and development of other high-temperature flexoelectric nanomaterials.

One of the many benefits of the Lightning in situ heating&biasing solution is the unique possibility of applying extreme electric fields at the highest temperature. This has certainly played an important role in the discovery the phenomenon that led to the Nature publication.

Book your Live Demonstration and see how the Lightning can boost your research.

Working with high energy electrons (up to 300 kV in current commercial systems) means a large amount of X-Rays are generated inside the microscope: manufacturers are well aware of the potential risks and they take the utmost care to make sure you can operate the electron microscope without being harmed by lethal radiation.

What about DENSsolutions’ holders then? We would like to share our tests results to show we take exactly the same precautions as the original manufacturers.

In this case we performed the tests with one of the TEM providers, with OEM operators and approved measuring devices. The standard protocol was used (beam current equal to >75 nA)

Maximum allowed radiation level: 1000 nS/h

Wildfire DT/Lightning: 235 nS/h                             Climate/Stream: 223 nS/h

For any further questions please do not hesitate to contact your DENSsolutions Sales Representative

Stream, our new in situ liquid solution, was officially launched at IMC. After only a month, we are happy to announce its first installation.

Researchers at EMAT, the well known EM facility located in Antwerp (Belgium), have selected Stream LB (liquid&biasing) to perform Electron Diffraction Tomography on advanced energy materials. A big role in their decision was played by the advanced and unique control of the experiments in liquid enabled by Stream. Yesterday it was installed and formally accepted: we wish a lot of success to EMAT with their brand new system!

The Netherlands are the place to be when it comes to innovation: the Dutch Chamber of Commerce selects every year the 100 most innovative SMEs and, yesterday, it was announced DENSsolutions came in 6th position. It is an achievement that makes us very proud and further motivates us to increase the impact of in situ microscopy on your lives.

A big contribution to the result comes from the Climate in situ EM gas&heating solution and its impact on how scientists across the world are trying to solve environmental issues.

Why is the Climate so impactful then?

• true dynamic mixing: change at will gas composition, in seconds and with any partial pressure.
• explore the kinetics of your reaction with gas analysis, at any flow rate
• analyze the thermodynamics of the processes thanks to a Nano-reactor designed for calorimetry,

Read more about the Climate HERE.

Metal nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed on a high surface-area support are normally used as heterogeneous catalysts. The recent introduction of Gas Cell systems has enabled experimental demonstration of the way structure reconstruction of the NPs occurs in real catalysis. However, the role played by supports in these processes is still unclear. Supports can be very important in real catalysis because of the new active sites at the perimeter interface between nanoparticles and supports.

In this contribution, the DENSsolutions Climate Gas&Heating solution, owing to its unsurpassed experimental flexibility and stability under any condition, has been used to exploit the full power of in situ aberration corrected electron microscopy. Coupled with multiscale model, the experiment clearly shows that the interaction between the support and the gas environment greatly changes the contact surface area between the metal and support, which further leads to the critical change in the perimeter interface.
The dynamic changes of the interface in reactive environments can thus be predicted and be included in the rational design of next-gen supported metal nanocatalysts. In particular, the multiscale model shows quantitative agreement with experimental observations: this enables the understanding of atomic scale structures and, therefore, provides insights beyond the experimental limits.