A LVEM5 multi-modal benchtop electron microscope will soon be installed at the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute at Syracuse University. The LVEM5, capable of imaging in TEM SEM and STEM modes will be used in the research and development of new and exciting biomaterials. Additionally, the group hopes to take advantage of the low voltage imaging capabilities of the tool.
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A LVEM5 electron microscope will soon be installed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Chemical & Materials Sciences Department. PNNL is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) ten national laboratories, managed by DOE’s Office of Science
http://www.pnl.gov/
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Delong America is pleased to announce that we will have the LVEM5 benchtop electron microscope on display at booth 553 at the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2010 conference in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon.
The LVEM5 is the only multi-modal desktop EM on the market. It is able to operate in transmission modes as a TEM and in scanning modes as a SEM or STEM. Users are able to obtain all three types of information from the same sample and even the same area of interest. The LVEM5 is also capable of preforming electron diffraction.
The LVEM5 is capable of 2nm resolution in TEM mode and 3nm resolution in SEM mode, so you can see even your smallest of particles
The LVEM5 benefits from a 5kv electron source that means that you can visualize light weight materials such as polymers or biological tissues without the need for heavy metal stains. This is a huge advantage for users who want to get a greater understanding of their materials, and not their stain.
Please feel free to come by and schedule a demo to see this unique instrument for yourself. We are looking forward to meeting with you at the conference.
Regards, The LVEM5 Team
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A LVEM5 electron microscope will soon be installed at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – Fire Research Division – Materials Flammability Group
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – Fire Research Division
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A LVEM5 electron microscope will soon be installed at Yonsei University, Korea, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The instrument will be used to help characterize polymeric particles as well as inorganic nanoparticles and nanowires.
Yonsei University – Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A LVEM5 multi-modal benchtop electron microscope will soon be installed at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. The instrument will be shared among several science departments and used for both high-level research and education.
UTPB Homepage
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
There is growing interest to create new materials with never-before-seen synergistic properties or additional functionality. One way to do this is to combine different materials, with different properties, together in order to create a new ‘hybrid material. Often, it is a challenge to get these different materials together, especially at the nano-scale.
A recently published study in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, with authors from The Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at the US Air Force Research Laboratory, shows an interesting new way to do just that. The study, titled “Bioassembled Layered Silicate-Metal Nanoparticle Hybrids” uses a “biological blueprint” as a method to functionalize the surface of “layered aluminosilicate nanoparticles” with metal nanoparticles.
The usefulness of using molecular building blocks (amino acids, proteins, and enzymes) for designed organization of hybrid nanostructures has been shown many times in the past. For example, certain proteins have been shown to strongly bind to specific nanomaterials. In this way they can be used as biolinkers or “biological blueprint” to direct the assembly of materials into predefined structures. This study is one of the first times that the interactions between layered silicates and biological materials has been examined.
Layered aluminosilicate (LA) materials have been investigated for applications as diverse as polymer nanocomposites, drug delivery, sensing, and hemostatic agents among others. Many of these application areas would benefit from an increase the functionality of the LA. This is the goal of using the biological material to help guide the modification of the LA into more useful varieties.
This research shows that hybrid structures derived from a “biological blueprint” have been shown to have interesting new properties. For example some of these new hybrid nanoparticles are responsive to a weak external magnetic field that enables novel magneto-optical fluids. These fluids can be optically translucent or opaque, depending on the presence or absence of a magnetic field. Others display heating during exposure to RF radio waves. These functional properties have much value in applications ranging from sensors to cancer treatments.
The LVEM5 played an important role in this research. Due to the scale of the materials being studied, electron microscopy was needed to be able to evaluate the binding of the nanomaterials to the biological template, as well as understand if the materials were being assembled together as predicted. Conventional Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) requires that biological materials, such as phages, be stained with heavy metals in order to be resolved. In this study, the addition of heavy metal stains would make it difficult to understand if the phages are bound to the nano-materials. Low-Voltage Electron Microscopy (LVTEM) allows the operator to visualize biological materials at the nanoscale without the use of these destructive heavy metal stains.
Low-voltage transmission electron microscopy (LVTEM) of NaMMT particles with the biopanned phage clones qualitatively showed selective binding to the aluminosilicate layers (Figure 1). For example, the phage clone expressing M1 exhibited binding to the MMT sheets (Figure 1C), whereas the M13 phage displaying a non-specific peptide showed little or no binding to the MMT (Figure 1B).
Takeaway from Figure 1:
Drummy, L., Jones, S., Pandey, R., Farmer, B., Vaia, R., & Naik, R. (2010). Bioassembled Layered Silicate-Metal Nanoparticle Hybrids ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 2 (5), 1492-1498 DOI: 10.1021/am1001184
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Led by Dr. Emilien Pelletier, the Institut des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski at the Université du Québec à Rimouski has obtained an LVEM5 benchtop electron microscope to help them study the short-term and long-term effects of nano-materials on the marine environment.
Dr. Pelletier is the Canada Research Chair in Marine Ecotoxicology. The overall objective of the chair is to understand the impact of natural and anthropogenic stresses on the short-and long-term high-latitude coastal ecosystems to contribute to the conservation, protection and sustainable development of cold coastal marine resources.
One of the key focuses of the lab is to study nanotoxicology as it applies to cold coastal environments. This is an emerging discipline that incorporates studies on the environmental fate and toxic effects of nano-materials on human and marine species such as phytoplankton, bivalves and echinoderms.
Currently the researchers are using the LVEM5 in TEM, SEM and STEM modes to examine marine animals that have been exposed to various nano-materials to better understand how these materials are being absorbed and incorporated into their shells.
Selected Images
For more information on Dr. Pelletier’s work see (in French)
Posted from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Undergraduate biology students at Lehigh University are using the LVEM5 to evaluate bacteriophages obtained from local soil samples. Starting with a tube of dirt collected from a location of their choice, each student underwent the process of isolating and purifying their bacteriophages from plaques on bacterial lawns. Plaques were selected and purified by repeated plating and observation.
(more detail and selected images below)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
We have found that the LVEM can provide high contrast images of a wide variety of samples, including dendrimers
