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Congrats to Ho Leung Chan for Being Selected as a 2024 M&M Student Scholar

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.

Congrats to Chris Regan and William Hubbard for Receiving the 2023 Microscopy Today Innovation 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.

Congrats to Jessica Ramella-Roman for Being Recognized as an SPIE Community Champion in 2019 and 2020

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.

Congratulations to Christian Tanner for Receiving the 2024 SSRL Scientific Development Award

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.

Congratulations to Christian Tanner for Being Selected as a 2024 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellow

The University of California today (April 8) announced its fifth class of UC President’s Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellows, 27 highly accomplished young scientists awarded the opportunity to join Nobel laureates from around the globe at the 2024 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany.

“We are thrilled to provide some of the University’s most promising scientists the opportunity to attend this one-of-a-kind scholarly summit,” said UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D. “Promoting innovation and discovery, and fostering international collaboration, are foundational to the University of California’s mission of teaching, research and public service.”

Congratulations to Christian Tanner for Being a Finalist for the APS DSOFT Emerging Soft Matter Excellence (ESME) Award

The APS DSOFT Emerging Soft Matter Excellence (ESME) Awardrecognizes an exceptional graduate student pursuing research in soft matter physics.

To be considered for the ESME Award the student must:

  1. be a DSOFT member;
  2. be currently pursuing a PhD;
  3. not have completed the PhD requirements before the October 27, 2024 application deadline.

The DSOFT ESME committee will select 12 finalists who will be invited to give a 12-minute talk in a special DSOFT Early Career Awards Symposium at the March Meeting. Finalists will also be invited to a celebratory dinner with the DSOFT Chair and ESME Committee.

The Awards Symposium will be open to all March Meeting attendees and advertised broadly to DSOFT members. Following the Symposium, the ESME Committee will select the ESME Awardee based on the quality of the candidate’s research, their presentation, and their response to questions. The winner will be announced and recognized at the DSOFT Business Meeting, and will receive $250 honorarium.

X-ray vision

One of the first experimenters at the new flagship US laser, Michigan alum Franklin Dollar’s mission is bigger than research.

When the first beam of light ran through a laser system that will be the most powerful in the U.S., it was delivered to an experiment designed by an old hand at U-M’s Center for Ultrafast Optical Sciences.

As a graduate student in the late 2000s, Franklin Dollar (MSE Electrical Engineering ’10, PhD Applied Physics ’12) built experiments at HERCULES, the most intense laser in the world at the time. HERCULES has now been upcycled into ZEUS, the Zetawatt-Equivalent Ultra-short laser pulse System—which will offer triple the power of the next largest US lasers. Its peak power is three petawatts, or more than 100 times global electricity production, but only for a few quintillionths of a second.

Dollar has stayed connected with the lab, leading experiments in late 2022, early 2023 and January this year that the ZEUS team used to work out the bugs in the system. Then earlier this month, he led ZEUS’s first official experiment in the flagship target area, where the signature zetawatt-equivalent experiments will take place.

Congratulations to Kwabena Bediako for Being Awarded the 2024 Philomathia Prize

The Philomathia Foundation is delighted to announce that Kwabena Bediako, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, has been awarded the 2024 Philomathia Prize. His innovative research is pushing the boundaries of materials science and could lead to groundbreaking advancements in electronics and renewable energy.

The Philomathia Prize has been presented annually since 2022 to an early-career Berkeley faculty member, from any discipline, who demonstrates great distinction and promise in their academic field. The prize, established through a generous endowment gift from the Philomathia Foundation, comes with a monetary award of $200,000 for use at the awardee’s discretion over a three-year period.

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