Electron microscopes - Research - Maastricht University

FEI Tecnai Arctica

A 200kV FEG cryo transmission electron microscope.
Mainly used for 3-dimensional structural elucidation of biological samples.
Equipped with a FEI Falcon III 4k Direct-Electron Detector (DED) and a Gatan Orius 2K CCD camera.
Holds a 12-grid autoloader system for the loading/screening of multiple grids and Volta phase plates for enhancement of the contrast in images taken at focus.
High-resolution image acquisition of single particles is achieved by FEI EPU, whereas electron tomography is automated by FEI Tomo4.

120kV transmission electron microscopes.
Equipped with FEI Eagle 4k CCD cameras for image acquisition.
Run the FEI EPU and Tomo4 software packages for automated single-particle data collection and 3-dimensional electron tomography.
Multiple Gatan side-entry (high-tilt) cryo-holders are available to enable data acquisition under low-dose cryo-conditions.
Used for the room-temperature observation and tomography of sections cut from embedded samples, as well as the screening of samples for single-particle EM, prepared by negative staining.
For acquisition of large field-of-view images, the tiles-acquisition program EM mesh has been installed.

High resolution FEG volume and (cryo-) dual beam scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Contains an additional column which generates a focused ion beam (FIB).
Whereas the electron beam is used to obtain high resolution images of the sample, the FIB can be used to remove material from a sample as well as image and depose platinum via the gas injection system (GIS).
Runs FEI Auto Slice and View to successively remove and image thin slices of a sample in order to achieve 3-dimensional reconstructions of large areas within the volume.
Can mill thin lamellae of frozen-hydrated cells which afterwards are reconstructed by cryo-electron tomography.
The program FEI MAPS is installed by which correlative microscopy images can be overlaid onto SEM images to position the milling process at the region-of-interest that was defined before by fluorescence microscopy.

A 200V-30kV scanning electron microscope (SEM).
Provides both secondary and backscattered electron imaging.
Equipped with energy dispersive x-ray detector (EDAX) for analytical mapping of elements.