The Advanced Microscopy Facility

 Location

We are located in the basement of the Bob Wright Centre, room A007 (office) and A015 (laboratory).

Hours of operation

We are open 9:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday. We are closed on statutory holidays.

With the appropriate experience, trained users can apply to management for after-hours access. On approval, you will be provided with a loner laboratory key and building key fob.

Instruments

We currently house an extensive suite of instrumentation for characterization and analysis, ranging from sample preparation to ultra-high resolution electron microscopes.

• TEM/STEM: Hitachi HF-3300V STEHM equipped with 4 holographic biprisms, EELS (Gatan) and EDX (Bruker).
• SEM: Hitachi S-4800 equipped with backscatter detector and EDX (Bruker).
• FIB: Hitachi FB-2100 equipped with Tungsten deposition and microprobe manipulator.
• Sample cleaners: a Fischione 1020 plasma cleaner and two Hitachi UV-light cleaners (one for TEM holders, one for SEM/bulk samples)
• Ion miller: Fischione 1010
• Sputter coaters: Cressington 208C for carbon coatings and Anatech Hummer VI for gold-palladium coatings.

Please refer to each instrument page for further information. After training, you can use our instruments or you can arrange for us to do the work for you.

The instrument room

The instrument room rests on an independent foundation at the basement level that is mechanically isolated from the building proper, with walls that are not mechanically connected to the internal structure of the building. In a sense, it is a small building inside the Bob Wright Centre. Adjacent to this independent foundation, two service rooms contain air handlers, vacuum pumps, chillers, and other supporting equipment. This reduces the amount of acoustic, mechanical and EM interference with the instruments.

The STEHM room

The STEHM resides in a specially built room which provides a further layer of protection from external magnetic and electric fields by surrounding the STEHM with a multi-layer Faraday cage made of galvanized steel and permalloy. The STEHM room has a separate air handler to maintain precise control over room temperature. This unit is located in a service room that is not on the independent foundation. As well, a separate service room not on the independant foundation contains chillers and vacuum pumps, to further isolate the STEHM from interference. Furthermore STEHM users have the option to control the STEHM remotely from an adjacent room.