The TEAM Project
The Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope (TEAM) project was a multi-laboratory development project from 2003 – 2009 to integrate the latest advancements in electron optics, detectors, sample stages, and computational techniques into a suite of instruments freely available to the worldwide scientific community. The NCEM facility has 2 double-aberration corrected microscopes for atomic resolution imaging.
TEAM 0.5 Optics
TEAM 0.5 is a double-aberration-corrected (scanning) transmission electron microscope (STEM/TEM). The basic instrument is a modified Thermo Fischer Titan 80-300 microscope equipped with a high-brightness Schottky-field emission “X-FEG” electron source, a source monochromator, a CEOS DCOR probe corrector, and a CEOS CETCOR image corrector. The probe corrector corrects coherent axial aberrations up to 4th order, as well as 5th order spherical aberration and six-fold astigmatism. The imaging aberration corrector fully corrects for coherent axial aberrations up to 3rd order and partially compensates for 4th and 5th order aberrations. TEAM 0.5 was the first electron microscope in the world to demonstrate 50 pm resolution in both TEM and STEM modes and 0.15 eV energy resolution using source monochromation.
Stage
TEAM 0.5 is equipped with a conventional Compustage goniometer and has a pole piece gap of ~2.5mm. The microscope is compatible with a several TEM holders:
- ait-free transfer
- single tilt
- double tilt
- tomography
- liquid nitrogen cooling
Detectors
TEAM 0.5 is equipped with a bottom mount Gatan OneView camera with 4kx4k pixels. The 4D Camera (based on the Gatan K3 platform) is available with 576×576 pixels for 4D-STEM and fast in situ movies at 87,000 frames per second. The large data sets are post-processed using a 100 Gbit/s connection to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) allowing for rapid analysis
Experimental Modes
The microscope can be operated either at 50, 80, 200 or 300 kV in the following modes:
- Aberration corrected HR-TEM combined with monochromated 0.15 eV energy resolution with 50 pm spatial resolution suitable for focal-series reconstructions
- HR-STEM with 50 pm resolution with a HAADF-STEM detector
- 4D-STEM with the 4D Camera for ptychography, strain mapping, and other scanning nanodiffraction experiments
- Nanoscale and Atomic Electron Tomography in STEM and TEM modes
Specifications 300 kV
| Monochromator ON | Monochromator OFF | |
| Information limit | 0.05 nm (at 0.15 eV) | 0.08 nm |
| STEM resolution | 0.1 nm | 0.05 nm |
| TEM 3rd order spherical aberration | <1 µm, adjustable (± 50 µm) |
| TEM 5th order spherical aberration | ~5 mm |
| STEM 3rd order spherical aberration | <0.5 µm |
| STEM 5th order spherical aberration | <0.5 mm |
Specifications 80 kV
| Monochromator ON | Monochromator OFF | |
| Information limit | 0.07 nm (at 0.2 eV) | 0.15 nm |
| STEM resolution | 0.2 nm | 0.14 nm |
| TEM 3rd order spherical aberration | <1 µm, adjustable (± 50 µm) |
| TEM 5th order spherical aberration | ~3 mm |
| STEM 3rd order spherical aberration | <1 µm |
| STEM 5th order spherical aberration | <5 mm |
