News

Neerja Aggarwal’s poster titled “Spectral DiffuserScope: Compact Hyperspectral Imager for Fluorescence Microscopy” received a Second Place Poster Award at the Advanced Imaging Methods Workshop at the University of California Berkeley.

The AFRL/AFOSR Chief Scientist Distinguished Lecture Series selected Dr. Laura Waller, the Charles A. Desoer Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, as the 2024 AFOSR Chief Scientist Distinguished Lecturer. On March 21, 2024, from 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET, Dr. Waller delivered a talk titled “Computational Imaging, from Microscopes to Telescopes,” exploring the joint design of imaging system hardware and software for optimized data acquisition and reconstruction.

Congratulations to Tristan O’Neill for receiving a 2024 M&M Student Poster Award for his poster titled, “Mapping Moiré Potentials with STEM EBIC Imaging.”

Graduate student Ho Leung Chan from Prof. Chris Regan’s research group at UCLA received a 2024 M&M Student Scholar Award! Her presentation is titled “Nano-PUND and STEM EBIC Imaging for Ferroelectric Polarization Mapping.”

The award consists of free registration for the meeting, $1000 travel support, and invitations to the Presidential Reception. Applicants must be bona fide students at a recognized college or university at the time of the meeting. Awards are based on the quality of the paper submitted for presentation at the meeting. The applicant must be the first author of the submitted paper. Successful applicants must present their papers personally at the meeting in order to receive the award.

Congratulations to Prof. Chris Regan and Dr. William Hubbard for receiving the 2023 Microscopy Today Innovation Award for Low Noise, Two Channel STEM EBIC System.

NEI’s STEM EBIC system enables straightforward imaging of electronic and thermal features that are otherwise difficult, if not impossible, to visualize in the TEM. Electron beam-induced current (EBIC) is a measure of the current generated in a sample as it is raster-­scanned by a focused electron beam. Associating the measured EBIC with the beam position produces an EBIC image. First implemented in the 1960s, EBIC imaging is usually performed in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to map electric fields in microelectronic devices. For instance, the built-in electric field of a p-n junction separates electron-hole pairs generated by the beam, producing a strong EBIC signal. Recently, thousand-fold improvements in current measurement sensitivity have led to practical EBIC imaging in scanning transmission electron microscopes (STEMs). This improved sensitivity reveals previously undetectable EBICs. In particular, the EBIC generated by secondary electron emission (SEEBIC) can now be routinely visualized.

Standard TEM-based techniques excel at determining the physical structure of a sample—the atomic locations and elemental identities—but they struggle to distinguish a metal from an insulator, or a warm interconnect from a cold one. In microelectronic devices, such electronic and thermal structure is generally of greater interest than the physical structure. STEM SEEBIC-based imaging of micro- and nano-electronic devices reveals these signals at high resolution. It can, for instance, quantitatively map conductivity, electric field, temperature, SE yield, active dopant concentration, and work function.

NEI’s STEM EBIC system is a turn-key solution for measuring extremely small EBICs. Low-noise STEM EBIC images of sub-pA signals, including SEEBIC, can be acquired in under two minutes. Extrinsic noise (for example, line noise) is nearly undetectable, so image filtering and post-processing are not necessary. The system—featuring a sample holder, custom substrates, and electronics optimized for EBIC in the TEM—is equipped with two independent EBIC amplifier channels for acquiring EBIC from different electrodes simultaneously. Two-channel EBIC can definitively separate SEEBIC from standard EBIC in situations where both are present, which greatly facilitates analysis and interpretation. NEI’s STEM EBIC system is designed to work with other in situ techniques, including heating and biasing on either custom-fabricated test devices or FIB-extracted cross-­sectional samples.

Max Krauss, an undergraduate student and Fort Lewis College, was awarded 2024 FLC Computer Engineering Senior of the Year. Congratulations, Max!

Each year, the FIU community comes together to celebrate and acknowledge esteemed staff and faculty members for their remarkable accomplishments and dedicated years of service at our FIU Service and Recognition Awards.

Prof. Jessica Ramella-Roman has been recognized as an SPIE Community Champion for her outstanding volunteerism with the Society in 2019 and 2020.

The distinction is awarded to SPIE members to recognize their commitment to SPIE, its mission, and the broader optics and photonics community.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, an educational not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-bsed science, engineering, and technology. The society serves 257,000 constituents from 173 countries, offering conference and their published proceedings, continuing education, books, journals, and the SPIE Digital Library.

Tanner works on self-assembling nanocrystals, which could be the basis for less expensive, easier to build displays and solar cells.

What Christian Tanner wants to do, ultimately, is help create materials that could be applied to building better solar cells or video displays — and to do that big-picture work, he coaxes nanoscopically tiny building blocks to put themselves together and watches the process unfold using X-rays at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

For his efforts, Tanner will receive the 2024 SSRL Scientific Development Award, to be presented at the SSRL/LCLS User’s Meeting taking place September 22-27. The award comes with $1,000 to help promote the dissemination of research performed at SSRL.