Vol. 38, No. 18

1-18-2006
By: Julia Harris

Through the eyes of the Titan: New heavy-duty microscope takes aim at atoms

Twelve feet high and weighing two tons, the Titan 80-300 scanning transmission electron microscope is a far cry from the desktop version many of us recall from high school biology class.

The newest acquisition of the College of Engineering's Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials sits in its own special room in the basement of Fontana Lab and permits researchers to view objects at a magnification of up to 30 million times.

"CAMM produces research tools that can be used in the design of new materials, and to do that we need ways of characterizing the processes that go on at the atomic scale," Hamish Fraser, the center's director, explained. "The Titan enables us to get a very accurate picture of those mechanisms that determine the properties of large pieces of material."

This kind of accuracy is needed if materials science is to keep step with advances in the computational modeling capabilities of aircraft manufacturers, automotive designers and other manufacturers. At more than $3 million, the Titan boasts technology that enables never-before-seen resolutions of objects.

"Any time you use a lens to image something, there will be a certain aberration associated with that lens, which means that your image is not exactly the same as your object," Fraser said. "The Titan has a corrector to address that aberration, a big breakthrough in microscopy."

Other improvements include a monochromator, which reduces the amount of energy spread in the electron beam used to image the sample, and a spectrometer that reads information contained in electrons that have passed through the sample. Finally, the stability of the Titan allows for longer exposures, up to 400 seconds per image view, without any disturbance of the sample from rogue air currents.

"This stability translates into a capability to switch between different imaging modes while imaging the same region of the sample," said graduate student Libor Kovarik, who uses the Titan in his research on aluminum alloys. "The new design makes it possible to optimize the imaging conditions for specific applications, which wasn't available on the previous generation of microscopes."

Though the machine has only been in operation for roughly two months, Kovarik has already seen impressive results that have led to breakthroughs in his understanding of the strength properties of the alloy.

Doctoral student Arda Genc, whose research focuses on the characterization and development of metallic multilayer systems, is similarly enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with the Titan. "We have already had exciting results addressing critical material problems at the atomic level," he said. "The microscope opens up a whole new sub-angstrom world to discover."

Researchers across the university are encouraged to make use of the new equipment - provided they go through a training process first. "Before people can use the Titan, they have to show they know how to use a microscope safely and fluently," Fraser said. "The first part of the training is how not to break the equipment; the second part is how to get the results you're looking for."

Funding for the equipment came from the Air Force, with which Fraser has a partnership to research high-temperature materials for jet engines, as well as the Hayes Investment Fund and the Action Fund. Partnerships between researchers and graduate students, and between Ohio State and industry, allow unique opportunities for students and faculty to collaborate on important research.

"Ohio State is the first university in the nation to acquire one of these powerful microscopes," Fraser said. "It's very exciting to be able to give our students access to cutting-edge technology and the opportunity to contribute to leading research theory."

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