Super-powerful microscope facility gets £7m funding

More than £7m has been awarded to the SuperSTEM Laboratory in Cheshire by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to operate as the UK’s National Research Facility for Advanced Electron Microscopy.

The Sci-Tech Daresbury-based company’s powerful electron microscopes enable both industrial and academic researchers, from the UK and internationally, to study the structure and chemistry of objects a millionth the width of a human hair, in the development and understanding of new advanced materials.

The technology is particularly applicable to materials science and power generation, as well as in health and environmental research.

Science Minister Jo Johnson said: “Thanks to this funding boost, the UK will continue to be home to valuable research that will help industries across the world develop more advanced materials that could go on to replicate the success of graphene.

“Through our new Industrial Strategy and additional investment of £2.3bn for research and development, we are laying the foundations and working with industry to ensure the UK remains at the forefront on innovation for years to come.”

Located at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory, SuperSTEM is home to three super-microscopes relying on a technique known as aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM).

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