The Department for Nanostructured Materials at the Jožef Stefan Institute brings together scientists, experts and young researchers from various complementary fields of science: chemistry, technology, physics, materials science and mineralogy. The basic and applied research within the department includes experimental and theoretical investigations of materials structure and chemical compositions at the atomic level using advanced electron microscopy techniques, all with the aim to improve physical the properties of micro- and nanostructured materials.
A dual-beam Focused Ion Beam (FIB) FEI Helios NanoLab NL650, equipped with a Gas Injection System (GIS) containing a Pt and a C source, Omniprobe-Autoprobe200 micromanipulator for in-situ micro-manipulation of the specimen and TEM lamella transfer and with an Oxford X-MAX 50 SDD EDXS system. Other TEM sample preparation equipment includes Gatan Precision Ion Polishing Systems (PIPS), Linda Technoorg ion-miller, Bal-tec Res 050 ion miller, Gatan PECS, diamond wire saws, ultra-sonic grinders, Allied MultiPrep System TEM wedge polisher, Minimet 1000 grinder polisher and Struers LectroPol 5 electrolytic polishers.
JEOL ARM 200CF with probe Cs corrector is a state-of art scanning transmission electron microscope equipped with the cold field-emission gun, a Gatan GIF Quantum ER energy filter with DualEELS and FastEELS options, a Centurio energy-dispersive X-ray system with a large solid angle SDD X-ray detector, Gatan UltraScan 1000XP and Gatan Orius SC200D CCD cameras, a Quantum Detector Merlin direct electron detector as well as with HAADF, ABF, and BF detectors, having high energy resolution at high spatial resolution. The microscope is aligned for 200 kV, 120kV and 80 kV. JEOL 2010F is equipped with Gatan PEELS system, Oxford Instruments EDS ISIS 300 system, STEM detector (BD, ADF, HAADF) and Gatan Orius camera. Additionally, the following in-situ holders are available: NanoFactory instruments AFM-STM holder, Poseidon Electrochemical liquid TEM holder, Poseidon tri port heating liquid TEM holder, Fusion TEM Heating and Electrical System, Gatan Heating and Cooling holders and specimen 360o tilt tomography holder.
Department for Nanostructured Materials operates software that enables qualitative and quantitative interpretation of experimental high-resolution TEM and STEM images (ADF, HAADF, ABF), crystallographic data and spectroscopy data. Several software packages and scripts for general data processing software in Digital Micrograph and Matlab can be provided to external users via transnational access. Additionally, more specific software packages include JEMS, CrystalMaker package, QSTEM, HREM simulation suite, strain analysis software, etc.