UTC’s acqui­si­tion of an elec­tron beam micro­scope was sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly by the Picardie Region­al author­i­ties under the head­ing of “struc­tur­ing equip­ment” in the State-Region Invest­ment Pro­gramme (CPER) 2007–2013. François Oudet, head of co-respon­dent for equip­ment pur­chas­es under the CPER pro­vi­sions, tells us more about this 1.3 Meu­ro instrument. 

What are the characteristics of this electron beam microscope?

This mod­el is a TEM/STEM type (Trans­mis­sion Elec­tron Micro­scope – Scan­ning Trans­mis­sion Elec­tron Micro­scope) with a field gen­er­at­ing can­non. Nom­i­nal accel­er­a­tion is 200 kV. Ulti­mate res­o­lu­tion is 0.1 nm (in the TEM mode) and 0.2 nm (STEM). It is fit­ted with a series of devices: two cam­eras to observe the elec­tron beam (one is a wide angle cam­era, use main­ly to observe liv­ing cells and a high res­o­lu­tion cam­era to observe crys­tal struc­tures; an elec­tron detec­tor under clear air trans­mis­sion con­di­tions; an annu­lar elec­tron detec­tor for dark field trans­mis­sion con­di­tions to observe atom­ic num­ber con­trast lev­els; and also an X‑ray spec­trom­e­ter to car­ry out chem­i­cal analy­ses and pro­duce ele­ment map­pings of the sam­ple components. 

And what does an instrument like this contribute to UTC research?

The micro­scope is used to char­ac­ter­ize mat­ter down to sub-nano­met­ric scale, both from a struc­tur­al (mat­ter orga­ni­za­tion) and chem­i­cal (com­po­si­tion) point of view. The elec­tron beam micro­scope has now become a clas­sic tool to char­ac­ter­ize and to observe mate­r­i­al sam­ples, whether they are met­als, ceram­ic or com­pos­ites. Thus, all and any ITC research team with inves­ti­ga­tions of this nature can ben­e­fit from the micro­scope, with the pro­vi­so of cor­rect­ly prepar­ing the sam­ples. Typ­i­cal appli­ca­tions are char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of plant tis­sues, bio­mim­ic mem­branes, divid­ed and nano-mate­ri­als, agents that inter­act exter­nal­ly with bio­log­i­cal milieus and cell/surface inter­ac­tions (bio-mate­ri­als), char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of cat­a­lysts, of mate­ri­als for surgery (and the health sec­tor in gen­er­al), nano-met­ric bone, cell and mate­r­i­al struc­tures (bio­com­pat­i­bil­i­ties of pros­thet­ic implants, etc.). 

What investigations are scheduled today at the electron microscope facility?

Cur­rent­ly we are exam­in­ing main­ly poly­mer nano-encap­su­lat­ed par­ti­cles for use in bio­log­i­cal appli­ca­tions as flu­o­res­cent mark­ers. A sci­en­tif­ic arti­cle has already been pub­lished on these results: Ver­sa­tile Syn­thet­ic Strat­e­gy for Coat­ing Upcon­vert­ing Nanopar­ti­cles with Poly­mer Shells through Local­ized Pho­topoly­mer­iza­tion, Using the Par­ti­cles as Inter­nal Light Sources (Selim Beyaz­it, Ser­e­na Ambrosi­ni, Nataliya Marchyk, Emil­ia Palo, Vishal Kale, Tero Souk­ka, Bernadette Tse Sum Bui and Karsten Haupt, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 1 – 6). In this con­text, the inves­ti­ga­tion looked at both the mor­phol­o­gy of the objects (shape, size, phase dis­tri­b­u­tion) and crys­tal­liza­tion. Anoth­er theme asso­ciates process engi­neer­ing and looks at the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of com­plex nat­ur­al oxides in aci­c­u­lar mate­ri­als. In this case, we observe notably the elec­tron dif­frac­tions and use X‑ray spec­trom­e­try to com­ple­ment direct obser­va­tion of the crys­tal structures. 

How and why do the Picardie Regional authorities support this piece of equipment?

Picardie indeed has strong­ly sup­port­ed the projects con­form­ing its high lev­el of com­mit­ment in the “struc­tur­al equip­ment” cat­e­go­ry of the CPER 2007–2013, with 1.25 Meu­ros out of 1.3 Meu­ros (before tax), plus 50 000 euros from the FEDER (Euro­pean Region­al devel­op­ment Fund). The project pre­sen­ta­tion qual­i­fied the micro­scope as a pri­or­i­ty, trans­ver­sal acqui­si­tion to be used in UTC themes that con­tribute to the Picardie Region’s com­pet­i­tiv­i­ty (agro-resources, health and mate­r­i­al sci­ences and engi­neer­ing) and which tie in close­ly with research con­duct­ed by 4 of UTC’s research units (GEC, Rober­val BMBI and TIMR). The UTC Research Direc­torate present the acqui­si­tion project to the CPER min­is­te­r­i­al author­i­ties and to the FEDER offices in Brus­sels, and above all to the Picardie Region, insist­ing on the sci­en­tif­ic impor­tance of pos­sess­ing such a facil­i­ty and the need for hav­ing such a micro­scope in terms of region­al the­mat­ics, and shar­ing of its use among the var­i­ous UTC research units. The lat­ter point was high­ly appre­ci­at­ed by the CEPER spe­cial­ists. Con­tin­u­ous exchanges with Vir­ginie Dela­porte (in the Picardie Region Research and Inno­va­tion Ser­vices) enables us to imple­ment our pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy for high lev­el mod­ern ana­lyt­i­cal tools des­tined to be shared among lab­o­ra­to­ries and oth­ers. Giv­en the price tag the micro­scope has become the ‘emblem­at­ic’ tool but there are also oth­er high­ly impor­tant equip­ment units such as the atom­ic force micro­scope, a con­fo­cal laser micro­scope, an NMR spec­trom­e­ter and soon, a reha­bil­i­tat­ed ‘envi­ron­men­tal’ elec­tron microscope.