Q2 2023 - Protochips Newsletter

PROTOCHIPS CONNECTIONS

Electrochemistry in the TEM: Scaling Bulk to Nano with Relevance

Mike Coy | Senior Director, Global Applications Marketing

Research into energy storage solutions continues to become more critical as our world moves toward cleaner and more sustainable energy going forward. Understanding the fundamental science is a clear focus, and in situ electron microscopy in a liquid cell is a powerful tool for examining and analyzing electrochemical reactions at the nanoscale.

The traditional challenges of transmission electron microscopy, and in particular, the difficulty to miniaturize a standard benchtop experiment and tie the electrochemical data to the high-resolution imaging have made the correlation to bulk scale results more complicated and limited the use of this technique.

As a part of our recent In Situ AX launch, Protochips has delivered two significant steps forward in addressing these challenges and truly scaling the bulk to nano with relevance. Our new standard reference solution brings the reference electrode outside the microscope and delivers a new level of flexibility, allowing standard off the shelf electrodes like Silver/Silver Chloride to easily be used and interchanged. Correlation to bench top experiments is easier than ever.

Additionally, our latest evolution of AXON Synchronicity now integrates your electrochemical data directly with your imaging, connecting

critical information like a CV curve to directly to high resolution images, allowing a new level of understanding of your experiment.

Electrochemistry in the TEM is more powerful than every before!

Tim Eldred | Product Marketing Manager

Every Electron Counts

As electron microscopy continues to push the bounds of what we used to think was possible, it is important to take time to reflect on our fundamentals and how we can continue to demonstrate good rigorous investigation with an eye towards reproducibility.

Using dose management solutions allows a microscopist to fully understand their experiment and take into consideration all the beam effects on the sample. While some beam interactions are immediately visible, such as the knock-on damage in many 2D materials, other interactions can be more subtle. In samples with varying knock on sensitivity for example, prolonged exposure to differing dose rates can lead to inaccuracies in EDS or EELS. This can lead to issues with reproducibility, an issue very critical in the modern collaborative workspace of electron microscopy. The central question is how well can you truly know the dose rate and total dose each region of your sample was exposed to during your experiment.

By combining dose tracking software with our Synchronicity machine vision platform, we can now track sample irradiation whenever the sample is exposed, whether or not you’re even recording images. This results in a map of your sample showing precisely how much dose each region experienced at any point in your experiment. This solution has enabled us to demonstrate repeatable dose effects across different microscope platforms, columns, and countries. All of this is accomplished automatically on your microscope, no longer requiring post facto calculation or consideration. We look forward to applying this technology to help understand the precise mechanisms behind intentional and unintentional beam interactions in TEM going forward!

BROCHURES

FAIR Data Principles

FAIR data principles – ensuring that data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – are gaining more and more attention from the research community. Institutions are developing their strategies to support FAIR principles, and granting agencies require a detailed data management plan as part of the application process. Even on a personal level - isn’t sifting through a mountain of data, especially from older experiments, sometimes a challenge?

The advantages of AXON for imaging are obvious, but did you know that AXON can also help ensure compliance with FAIR principles? During an

imaging session, AXON collects and compiles metadata from a variety of sources – including the microscope, the camera, and the in situ experiment - and synchronizes it with the image stream. Our free AXON Studio software gives you the power to easily search and sort using this metadata, then package and share your results with your colleagues. Better yet, creating these comprehensive datasets will allow you to return your experiment a week or even years from now and ensure reproducibility.

FAIR is the future, and using AXON prepares you for it.

John Damiano, PhD | CTO, Co-founder

OUR CUSTOMERS

“FIB-optimized E-chips are an elegant and efficient solution for in-situ electricalbiasing experiments in TEM. Owing to their geometry, user has a full control and high flexibility during the sample preparation and measurements. As a plus, a brilliant support team makes life of in-situ users much easier.”

DISTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT

Lotis Korea is our distributor operating in South Korea, oriented around in-situ electron microscopy, spectroscopy and specimen preparations solutions. With 43 Protochips systems operating in SouthKorea, Han Seo, Liam An and John Lee are incredible resources supporting Protochips and customers.

Furthermore, Lotis has a strong presence at the Korean Society of Microscopy (KSM) two times a year, where they have shown our AXON and AXON Dose software solutions. Recently, a training was done to bring users up to speed at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology Jeonbuk.

Dr. Vesna Srot Stuttgart Center for Electron Microscopy Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research Heisenbergstrasse 1

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT

Dylan Wood Americas Regional Sales Manager

Mara Knarr Staff Accountant

Location: San Francisco, CA

Mara grew up in Bristol, Connecticut and moved to Maine when she was around 11 years old. She then did her bachelor’s degree in Financial Economics at The University of Maine in Orono. At the same time she worked a full time job at The College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture. After she graduated, she pursued one of her many hobbies by traveling the world before moving to North Carolina in 2019. After her move, she started working with Protochips in July 2019.

Within Protochips, Mara was promoted to the role Staff Accountant, where she reviews financial documents, reports and statements. Mara also balances our accounts, and goes through the end of month close schedules. She also spends her time chasing many of us down for receipts

that were not submitted, to make sure we all get paid in time. Coming from a large University setting, Mara mentions that it is refreshing to work for a small company where you can get to know everyone on a personal level. She likes how Protochips empowers employees to identify workflows in need of improvement and recognizes those who create solutions to streamline a better process through our various award programs.

Next to her work at Protochips, Mara enjoys travel, to learn about other cultures, and trying new activities and food. Some of her favorite adventures include spelunking in South Africa, paragliding in Nepal, rock climbing in Thailand, and snorkeling in Costa Rica. She also enjoys hiking with her very cute dog, gardening, music, and baking.

SPRING MRS 2023 RECAP

The MRS Spring 2023 Meeting took place April 10 to April 14 in San Francisco, CA. The exhibit hall was full and it is encouraging to see attendance at these conferences continuing to increase back to pre-COVID numbers. The booth was busy throughout the whole show. We saw a 50% increase in the number of visitors compared to both MRS Spring 2022 and MRS Fall 2022. It was great to talk to with so many people in our booth. And it was great to see many of our users presenting at this event. Session CH01.04: “Advanced Microscopy in Battery Research II” hosted many in situ and in operando talks including “Advancing Liquid-EM Techniques and Workflows for Operando Studies of Energy Materials” given by our Applications Team Lead, Madeline Dukes. Looking forward to M&M 2023 in Minneapolis!

“Protochips empowers employees to identify workflows in need of improvement”

“We saw a 50% increase in the number of visitors compared to both MRS Spring 2022 and MRS Fall 2022”

Eric Rufe | Eastern US Sales Manager

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Dr. Nynke Krans | Applications Scientist EMEA

Make Informed On-The-Fly Decisions at the TEM with “Session Review” From AXON Synchronicity

Most in-situ electron microscopy experiments depend heavily on the operator to make accurate decisions during acquisition behind the microscope. Collecting data during these experiments is usually done using preview or collection modes, and images need to be saved in separately. Only after saving these to a folder on the computer can the images be viewed. This is then usually done by scrolling through immense folders with images to observe any of the dynamic interactions. However, during live imaging, it is important that a microscopist is able to judge and understand which action to undertake.

• Three major issues that can be seen using the current data collection method:

- The experiment cannot be reviewed during live data collection

- The microscopist is too late to make decisions on their dynamic experiment

- Data collection and data saving are separated, meaning that data loss is evident

What can AXON Synchronicity and Studio offer?

Using AXON Synchronicity, all images are coming into the AXON PC and are being saved with their respective metadata immediately. During any type of experiment, by clicking the ‘review session’ option in AXON Synchronicity, these images can be reviewed and the experimental parameters adjusted. AXON Studio will open up the active and live dataset, while the user is still doing measurements, to observe any images already taken in that dataset. While the review is happening, the images are still being recorded using AXON Synchronicity.

In AXON Studio, the active metadata can then be plotted under the images, to observe any dynamical changes or even focus changes to the area of interest. Moreover, when clicking the refresh button, the new images are being pulled into AXON Studio from the live session. This way anybody can quickly review and alter the ongoing experiment.

The scrubbing and playback options in AXON Studio make it possible to immediately observe any dynamic changes in the sample behavior. Plotting metadata such as the Match Correlation can quantifiably show the changes over time. Moreover, data can be deleted so that the data stack does not become too large, or smaller collections can be filtered out of the larger dataset to pack and share to other collaborators. This can all be done while live imaging, eliminating time consuming data analysis afterwards and adding the ability to make decisions on the spot.

HIGHLIGHTED PUBLICATION

UPCOMING WEBINARS

TUESDAY, JUNE 27TH 2023

Dr. Yao Yang | University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Yang will be summarizing his experience and research in the area of multi-modal studies: Operando liquid cell in the Synchrotron.

WATCH WEBINAR RECORDINGS ON OUR YOUTUBE PLAYLIST!

AMERICAS

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA PROTOCHIPS HQ

SALES & APPLICATIONS

MANUFACTURING & DESIGN

EMEA

UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS APPLICATIONS

PROTOCHIPS, GmbH SERVICE & APPLICATIONS

LONDON, ENGLAND SALES

UPCOMING EVENTS

Scandem

June 12-15, 2023

Uppsala, Sweden

NAM28

June 18-23, 2023

Providence, RI

JSM

June 26-28, 2023

Kunibiki Messe, Matsue

Iamnano

June 28 - July 1, 2023

Kunibiki Messe, Matsue

MMC 2023

July 4-6, 2023

Manchester, UK

ASIA

SHANGHAI, CHINA SERVICE & APPLICATIONS

TOKYO, JAPAN APPLICATIONS

SINGAPORE SALES

M&M 2023

July 23-27, 2023

Minneapolis, MN

IMC

September 10-15, 2023

Busan, South Korea

MS&T

October 3-4, 2023

Columbus, OH

ECS 244

October 8-12, 2023

Gothenburg, Sweden

Fall MRS

November 26 -

December 1, 2023

Boston, MA