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Division of Research

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Electron Microscopy
Core

 

 

About

Welcome to the electron microscopy core facility. The core was established in the Agrawal Engineering Research Building (AERB) in 2022 to serve the UH community and external users from the academia and industry.

This core facility is equipped with Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM), a plasma Focus Ion Beam (pFIB), conventional Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Aberration Corrected TEM (AC-TEM). The resolution of the instruments in this core facility is between 3nm and approximately 100pm. The facility is capable of conducting conventional microscopy, tomography, advanced software image reconstruction, in-situ testing, spectroscopy, among other techniques. Due to the resolution on the instruments, samples can be analyzed to the atomic resolution in both imaging and spectroscopy.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) Equipment

Axia

Axia-ChemiSEM is equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and Cathodoluminescence (CL) detectors. The maximum accelerating voltage is 30 kV in a filament (tungsten) source. The chamber inner width is 280 mm. The electron beam resolution is up to 3 nm. The SEM is equipped with secondary and backscattering detectors for conventional imaging and topographic/compositional contrast.

Plasma Focused Ion Beam (pFIB)

Available Fall 2025
The pFIB or dual beam is instrumented in a Helios SEM microscope with a resolution of 0.9 nm. The system can be operated under conventional or environmental conditions. The pFIB can be used to prepare TEM samples or autoslice using plasma (xenon) or gallium sources with manual or programable capabilities. Directional Backscattering Detector (DBD), EasyLift nanomanipulator, navigation camera (NavCam), Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS).

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Scanning/Transmission Electron Microscopy (S/TEM) Equipment

Aberration Corrected Transmission Electron Microscope (AC-TEM)

Available Fall 2025
JEM-ARM300F2 (GRAND ARM™2 Atomic Resolution Analytical Microscope) equipped with a Cold Field Emission electron Gun (Cold-FEG) which provides a smaller energy spread from the electron source for 300 kV and 60 kV. At 300 kV, the STEM image resolution with the standard probe conditions of a Cs-corrected can reach 53 pm. The system is equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) with FHP2 objective lens pole piece, it can provide higher X-ray detection efficiency (1.4sr) with sub-angstrom resolution in EDS elemental maps. Next-generation Gatan imaging filter that enables electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM), The energy resolution of the Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) is up to 0.3 eV. The OBF (Optimum Bright Field) STEM has an advantage for low dose imaging, such as beam sensitive materials including Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and Zeolites require a reduced electron dose while maintaining clear atomic contrasts for the framework of light elements.

Computer Workstations

  • 1TB Ram
  • Two Intel Xenon Gold 2.2 GHz, 24 cores
  • Windows 11 Pro
  • 12 TB Hard Drive
  • Two 55 inch 8K monitors
  • Digital Micrograph software
  • Velox software
  • Aviso software for image processing including 3D reconstruction

Contact

Guanhui (Gigi) Gao Holland, Ph.D.
Research Manager of Electron Microscopy Core
(713) 743- 6458
Email: ggao7@central.uh.edu
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Room 112, 116, Durga D. and Sushila Agrawal Engineering Research
4218 M. L. King Blvd,
Houston, TX 77204