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Towards data-driven next-generation transmission electron microscopy

Nature Materials volume 20, pages 274–279 (2021)Cite this article

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Electron microscopy touches on nearly every aspect of modern life, underpinning materials development for quantum computing, energy and medicine. We discuss the open, highly integrated and data-driven microscopy architecture needed to realize transformative discoveries in the coming decade.

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Fig. 1: The electron microscopy framework.
Fig. 2: Microscopy data-production rates and analysis workflows.

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Acknowledgements

This commentary is the result of discussions from the first in a series of Next-Generation Transmission Electron Microscopy (NexTEM) workshops, held at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in October 2018. S.R.S. thanks A. Lang, B. Matthews and J. Hart for reviewing the manuscript. This work was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Nuclear Processing Science Initiative (NPSI) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL is a multi-programme national laboratory operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract no. DE-AC05-76RL0-1830. This work was supported in part by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US DOE under contracts no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (C.O.), no. 10122 (S.R.S. and Y.D.), no. KC0201010 ERKCS89 (S.V.K.), no. KC0203020:67037 (D.L.) and no. DE-AC02-05-CH11231 within the KC22ZH programme (H.Z.). This work was supported in part by the US DOE, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (A.P.-L.). M.M. acknowledges the Virginia Tech National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NanoEarth), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), supported by NSF (ECCS 1542100). This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant no. 856538, project 3D MAGiC; and grant no. 823717, project ESTEEM3 (R.E.D.-B.)). X.Z. acknowledges support from the DOE BES Geosciences Program at PNNL (FWP 56674). The work was partly performed at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (S.V.K.) and the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (K.H.), which are Office of Science User Facilities operated for the US DOE. Work at the Molecular Foundry was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US DOE under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. A portion of the microscopy shown was performed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a national scientific user facility sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at PNNL. L.J. acknowledges SFI grants AMBER2-12/RC/2278-P2 and URF/RI/191637. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the US DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the US DOE or the US government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Steven R. Spurgeon, Matthew J. Olszta & Edgar C. Buck

  2. National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Colin Ophus

  3. Advanced Microscopy Laboratory, Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), Dublin, Ireland

    Lewys Jones

  4. School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Lewys Jones

  5. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA

    Amanda Petford-Long

  6. Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Sergei V. Kalinin

  7. Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany

    Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski

  8. Hummingbird Scientific, Lacey, WA, USA

    Norman Salmon

  9. Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Khalid Hattar

  10. Physical Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Wei-Chang D. Yang & Renu Sharma

  11. Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Yingge Du, Libor Kovarik, Dongsheng Li & Xin Zhang

  12. Applied Chemicals and Materials Division, Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA

    Ann Chiaramonti

  13. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Haimei Zheng

  14. Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    R. Lee Penn

  15. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Mitsuhiro Murayama

  16. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mitra L. Taheri

Authors
  1. Steven R. Spurgeon
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  19. Xin Zhang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Steven R. Spurgeon or Mitra L. Taheri.

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Spurgeon, S.R., Ophus, C., Jones, L. et al. Towards data-driven next-generation transmission electron microscopy. Nat. Mater. 20, 274–279 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-00833-z

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