NUS first in Asia to house the Helium Ion Microscope

14 Sep 2009

The inauguration and official opening of the Plasmonics and Advanced Imaging Technology Laboratory (P&AIT) which houses NUS' very own Helium Ion Microscope was held on 10 September 2009. The P&AIT laboratory is under NanoCore at NUS, an interdisciplinary research collaboration in the science and technology at the nano-scale level. At the event, a Joint Research and Development Agreement was inked between NUS NanoCore and Carl Zeiss SMT.

The Helium Ion Microscope opens new windows in nanoscale imaging. The microscope looks at the surface of objects by scanning the surface with a fine helium beam formed by a single atom at the tip of a 2 metre tall emitter. This produces images below 0.25 nanometre in scale or the equivalent of 1 million times smaller than the size of a human hair. To-date, there are only 12 such microscopes in the world, in places including the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

"First there was optical microscopy and the next huge step afterwards which happened some 50 years ago was the electron microscopy. The Helium Ion microscopy is a huge step forward," noted Dr Nick Economou, President of Carl Zeiss SMT Inc, USA.

Said Dr Daniel Pickard, Head of the P&AIT: "The goal of this laboratory is to push the cutting-edge of imaging. We hope to open up realms previously unseen to develop novel contrast mechanisms." He noted that there are three major areas - the biological sciences, material sciences and semi-conductor field - where the Helium Ion Microscope will make an impact.

Nanocore's Director Prof Thirumalai Venky Venkatesan shared that there are already collaborations among the various departments in NUS. This includes working with Director of the Mechanobiology Research Centre of Excellence Prof Michael Sheetz to study cell structure and movement, as well as bacteria formation. There is also a project on graphene which involves researchers from the Department of Physics, Chemistry, Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Under the Joint Research and Development Agreement with Carl Zeiss SMT, novel advances made using the microscope will benefit the NanoCore researchers, while new applications of the technique discovered by the NanoCore researchers will, in turn, enable Zeiss to further enhance the tool's capability.

On the collaboration, Managing Director of Carl Zeiss SMT Singapore Manfred Hanke said: "We are proud to be chosen by NUS as a partner in order to support NUS' research programmes and to manifest and develop NUS' position as one of the leading regional academic institutions for research in material analysis and life science applications."