Speaker: Professor Nigel D. Browning, Chair of Electron Microscopy in School of Engineering, Director of the Albert Crewe Centre.
Abstract
Transformative innovations in the science and technology of personalized medicine, energy storage, and clean growth start from achieving atomic and molecular understanding, and then control, of the fundamental (bio)-chemical interactions that determine each process. To generate the required level of understanding and control, UKRI has recently invested in a new national facility being led by UoL that is centered on the unique measurement capabilities offered by relativistic ultrafast electron diffraction and imaging (RUEDI)
The working design of RUEDI is based around a 4MeV RF source with a pulse duration of 10fs, coupled to both a diffraction and an imaging beam line. The diffraction capability will be similar to MeV systems used extensively around the world, but in RUEDI we will focus on fast precision rotation/translation ambient/cryo-stages in a UHV chamber. The imaging capability will be unique and involve the design and implementation of what will essentially be a 1.5MeV TEM. The imaging capabilities should permit sub-nm spatial resolution to be coupled with sub-ps temporal resolution
Using in-situ stage designs for gases/liquids/heating/cryo, high temperature/pressure can be coupled with a wide range of optical excitations to probe many transient and non-equilibrium dynamic states in materials. The methods and processes that are developed from the five novel RUEDI research themes – materials in extremes, the chemistry of change, internal/external fields, advanced energy technologies, and in-vivo biosciences will contribute to both local and national government policy/strategy for transportation, energy self-sufficiency and patient care.
The facility will also help train scientists who can utilize the knowledge and methods to support existing businesses and form new start-ups that will lead to an overall expansion of the UK economy. As part of the development of the facility, RUEDI will involve artificial intelligence to help develop a digital twin for the instrument and to locate, assign and support users for the facility. In this presentation, I will discuss the current state-of-the-art in dynamic in-situ TEM/STEM, describe the advances anticipated with the RUEDI instrument, and highlight the potential funding opportunities associated with participation in the RUEDI project.
Biography
Professor Nigel Browning is currently the Director of the Albert Crewe Centre for Electron Microscopy at the University of Liverpool (since 2017). He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Reading, U. K. and his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge, U. K (1991). He has held multiple positions in the US at both national laboratories and universities: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1992-1995), University of Illinois at Chicago (1996-2002), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2003-2006), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2006-2011), the University of California-Davis (2003-2011) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) (2011-2017).
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Microscopy Society of America (MSA). He received the Burton Award from the Microscopy Society of America in 2002 and the Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society in 2003 for atomic resolution methods in STEM. With his collaborators at LLNL he also received R&D 100 and Nano 50 Awards in 2008, and a Microscopy Today Innovation Award in 2010 for the development of the DTEM. He has over 400 refereed publications (h=101) and has given over 380 invited presentations on the development and application of advanced STEM/TEM methods. Recently he has become a co-founder of a spin-out company, SenseAI, commercializing IP he co-developed on Inpainting for STEM/TEM images (>15 patents on compressive sensing/machine learning for imaging).
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