Surface Science

Company Announcements

In February, AFM firm Park Systems celebrated the grand opening of its European headquarters in Mannheim, Germany. The site features a fully equipped AFM nanoscience lab.

In February, Prior Scientific Instruments, a manufacturer of precision optical and mechanical instrumentation, announced the purchase Queensgate Instruments from Elektron Technology for £0.8 million ($1.1 million) and additional cash based on a future sales target. Queensgate is a leading supplier of high-precision nanopositioning systems and sensors. For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2017, Queensgate’s revenues totaled £0.7 million ($0.9 million).

The Saudi Gazette reported in March that the King Abdullah University of Science and Technologies (KAUST) has officially opened a new Center for Excellence for Optical Microscopy, a partnership between KAUST and Leica Microsystems. Systems to be used at the Center include Leica’s SP8 confocal platform for super-resolution microscopy.

 

Product Introductions

Oxford Instruments Asylum Research introduced in January the price-competitive MFP-3D Origin+ AFM, which complements the existing Origin AFM with a broader range of imaging modes and accessories. The package includes the AFM, a 120 µm range X-Y closed-loop scanner and more than 20 imaging modes.

In February, Oxford Instruments Asylum Research announced the development of an interferometric displacement sensor that provides a direct measure of AFM cantilever displacement. According to the company, the sensor will be useful in characterizing and advancing techniques for nanomechanics.

In January, Olympus launched two new Olympus TruResolution objectives for its multiphoton laser scanning microscopes, which deliver what the company calls an industry-first automatic spherical aberration compensation function that also compensates for Z-shifts when operating the collection collar. For use with the FLUOVIEW FVMPE-RS microscope, the new objectives were developed jointly with the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan to address challenges in neuroscience.

EDAX, an AMETEK company, released in January the latest revision of its APEX Analysis software, which is now available for the Octane Elect EDS system as well as the Element EDS system. New features include advanced reporting, drift correction and dynamic element mapping.

In February, PicoQuant and Ionovation announced an integrated platform combining their respective MicroTime 200 time-resolved microscope platform and PicoTweezers optical tweezers. This allows the use of time-resolved fluorescence microscopy on fixed cells.

Camera designer and manufacturer Photometrics, instrument manufacturer Cairn Research and system developer Mizar Imaging announced a partnership in February creating the MizarTILT light-sheet fluorescence microscopy conversion system combined with Photometrics’ Prime 95B CMOS camera. The combination maximizes the light gathering effectiveness of high-power objectives, and allows high magnification and high-resolution imaging.

In March, Thermo Fisher Scientific launched the Thermo Scientific Verios G4 extreme high-resolution SEM for semiconductor applications such as determining root cause defects, yield losses, and process and product failures. The company also debuted the Thermo Scientific Hyperion II Fast Nanoprober, which, according to the company, is the only commercially available nanoprober based on an AFM.

 

Sales and Orders of Note

In February, JEOL UK announced that the Scottish Cryo-EM consortium chose its JEM-Z300FSC CRYO ARM 300 Cryo Electron TEM for the Scottish Centre for Macromolecular Imaging. The system will be supported by a second TEM, the JEOL 200 kV JEM-F200 “F2” Cryo-TEM.

The UK’s Rosalind Franklin Institute announced a £1.55 million ($2.2 million) investment to develop a time-resolved high-resoultion TEM, manufactured by JEOL, as the first stage of a £10 million ($14.1 million) project to build a microscope that will be the first of its kind.

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