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 FEI Titan 80-300 MICROSCOPE equipped with a high-brightness Schottky-field emission “X-FEG” electron source, a source monochromator, a CEOS DCOR spherical-aberration probe corrector, and a CEOS CETCOR spherical-aberration 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
The microscope is equipped with the unique all piezo-electric TEAM Stage capable of ultra-stable operation (2 pm/sec drift rate) and high tilting (±180° tilt/rotate) within the 2.5 mm pole piece gap. The stage requires samples that are 1 mm in diameter, but NCEM provides sample modification assistance. Nanomaterials drop cast on typical 3mm TEM grids and FIB liftouts are easily modified.
Detectors
TEAM 0.5 is equipped with a bottom mount Gatan OneView camera with 4kx4k pixels. A 4D Camera (based in the Gatan K3 platform) is available with 576×576 pixels for 4D-STEM and fast in situ movies at 87,000 frames per second. Frames can be electron counted to remove detector noise.
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 |