Cutting-edge building design
The EMC is located at UOW's Innovation campus (iC) in Building 236. It is the first purpose-built building of its kind in New South Wales and only the second in Australia. In 2011, the EMC was selected as the entry for New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory for the Australian Timber Design Awards and won The People's Choice Award. Its construction was specifically designed to exceed the infrastructure requirements for the next generation of high resolution microscopes and their ancillary tools. The building environment for each of the seven microscopy suites follows a modular tiered system that minimises the environmental effects from mechanical vibration, ambient acoustic signals, thermal fluctuations and electrical, electromagnetic and magnetic interference.
Advanced instrumentation and sample preparation
The EMC comprises a total of seven microscopy suites that optimise individual microscope performance, two modern and well-equipped specimen preparation laboratories, utility/service corridors plus open plan offices for research and technical staff, higher degree research (HDR) students and visiting academics.
At present, seven instruments are installed and include an aberration-corrected cold Field Emission Gun (FEG) transmission electron microscope (TEM), an energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) optimised cold FEG-TEM, a conventional LaB6 TEM, an analytical thermal FEG scanning electron microscope (SEM), a cold FEG-SEM, a low vacuum/environmental SEM and a focussed ion beam (FIB) FEG-SEM.
A range of in-situ material characterisation capabilities exists at EMC. These include heating holders in FIB-FEGSEM and TEM, deformation/heating stage in FEGSEM and PI95 TEM Picoindenter.
Special emphasis has been placed on the design and fit-out of the two specimen preparation laboratories at the EMC by partnering with Struers Australia and Leica Microsystems GmbH. These showcase demonstration laboratories are designed to be ancillary to our microscopy suites by housing high precision cutters, quality grinding and polishing tools, room temperature and cryogenic microtomes for serial sectioning and highly accurate, target-preparation-based ion polishing systems.
Quality solutions
The EMC and its specialist staff provide quality microscopy solutions and training to students, commercial organisations, industry and government agencies. Our services include:
- Microscope use and sample preparation
- Consultancy services
- Contract research and development projects
- Collaborative research and development projects
- Training and seminars