PRESS RELEASES
Pressreleases of Forschungszentrum Jülich
Work Begins on Laboratory for World's Most Powerful Microscope
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Jülich, Aachen, 4 November 2009. With a groundbreaking ceremony, work began today on an extension to the Ernst Ruska-Centre (ER-C) on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich. Under the umbrella of the Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), from 2010 the Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, founded jointly by RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, will be operating a unique electron microscope with a world-beating resolution of 50 billionths of a millimetre. This will enable Jülich and Aachen to maintain their position as the frontrunners in ultrahigh-resolution microscopy worldwide. With the new microscope known as PICO, materials scientists and those conducting basic research from science and industry will be able to investigate atomic structures that have previously been inaccessible. This will benefit, for example, energy research or information technology. The Federal Government, the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the German Research Foundation will be providing a total of roughly \u20ac 15 million for the new building and equipment. Thomas Rachel (Member of the Bundestag and Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) called the ER-C and the PICO project a "shining example of how milestones can be achieved in Germany's innovative competitiveness by cooperation between university and non-university research." He said, "Researchers will be able to obtain completely new insights into the structure of matter here in Jülich with one of the most powerful microscopes in the world. As the Federal Research Ministry, we will continue to support such excellent basic research in future since only in this way can we secure Germany's innovative strength." PICO (Advanced Picometre Resolution Project) will have a resolution of 50 picometres (1 picometre = 10-12 metres). Using modern computer methods, not only individual atoms but also atomic distances and atom displacements can also be measured with a previously unknown accuracy of around one picometre - in other words less than one hundredth of the diameter of an atom. At the same time, spectroscopic analyses can be used to explain the nature of the atoms investigated and their chemical bonding conditions. PICO is based on aberration-corrected electron optics developed in the nineties with scientists from ER-C making a major contribution to this development. |
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Links:
Ernst Ruska Centre
Inauguration of the Ernst Ruska Centre (German)
Jülich Aachen Research Alliance
IFF-8 presents new sensor for hazardous liquids
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 Researchers at IFF-8 have developed a novel type of sensor
allowing a reliable as well as ultrafast differentiation between
liquid explosives and harmless fluids. In the current issue of
Superconductor Science and Technolgy (Vol 22, No 11, p 114005) members
of IFF-8's sensorics and spectrometry working party report on the
prospects of analysing liquids via precise electromagnetic
spectrometry analysis.Fast and reliable identification of liquids is of great importance in, for example, security, biology and the beverage industry. An unambiguous identification of liquids can be made by electromagnetic measurements of their dielectric functions in the frequency range of their main dispersions, but this frequency range, from a few GHz to a few THz, is not covered by any conventional spectroscopy. Researchers of IFF-8 have developed a concept of liquid identification based on Hilbert spectroscopy and high-Tc Josephson junctions, which can operate at the intermediate range from microwaves to THz frequencies. A demonstration setup has been developed consisting of a polychromatic radiation source and a compact Hilbert spectrometer integrated in a Stirling cryocooler. Reflection polychromatic spectra of various bottled liquids have been measured at the spectral range of 15 to 300 GHz with total scanning time down to 0.2 seconds and identification of liquids has been successfully demonstrated. |
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Research Centre Jülich Press Release (German) of 20 October 2009
Superconductor Science and Technolgy, Vol 22, No 11, p 114005
PICO – most powerful electron microscope to be installed in Jülich
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| An electron microscope with a record resolution of 50 picometres will be made available to a broad user community by RWTH Aachen University and Forschungszentrum Jülich from 2010. The instrument known as PICO will see details measuring only a fraction of an atomic diameter and thus at the absolute limits of optical systems. This will enable atomic structures for materials in energy research and microelectronics to be investigated more precisely than has ever been possible before. |
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Research Centre Jülich Press Release (German) of 12 December 2008
Ernst Ruska-Centre Web Services
HONDA Prize awarded to a group of german researchers
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| The Japanese Honda Foundation jointly awarded the Honda Prize 2008, which is worth around 140,000 German Marks, to a group of three German researchers. Professor Knut Urban, director of the Ernst Ruska-Centre and head of the IFF-8, was among them. The Foundation paid tribute to Dr Maximilian Haider, Heidelberg, Professor Harald Rose, Darmstadt and Professor Knut Urban for the development of aberration correction for transmission electron microscopes, which made it possible to study materials in an atomic resolution on a picometre level. |
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Research Centre Jülich Press Release (German) of 2 October 2008
Honda Foundation Press Release of 30 September 2008
Ernst Ruska-Centre Web Services
Closer co-operation in electron microscopy
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| Forschungszentrum Jülich, RWTH Aachen University and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation between the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) and the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) on 2 September 2008 in Aachen. |
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Research Centre Jülich Press Release (German) of 4 September 2008
Ernst Ruska-Centre Web Services
Electron microscopy enters picometre scale – IFF scientists are pioneers of ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy
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| IFF-8 scientists have succeeded in precisely measuring atomic spacings down to a few picometres using new methods in ultrahigh-resolution electron microscopy. A picometre corresponds to a billionth of a millimetre - a distance that is one hundred times smaller than the diameter of an atom. This makes it possible to find out decisive parameters determining the physical properties of materials directly on an atomic level in a microscope. Professor Knut Urban, director of the Ernst Ruska-Centre and head of the IFF-8, reports on this in the latest issue (25 July 2008) of the scientific high-impact journal "Science". |
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