Developments around ultrafast electron microscopy at CEMES have seen significant progress over the last year. The promising results obtained on a first prototype of ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscope (UTEM) developed in CEMES motivated the creation in 2018 of a first joint laboratory between CNRS and the Japanese company Hitachi High Technologies Corporation (HHT). The objective of this laboratory called HC-IUMi (Hitachi-CNRS Infrastructure for Ultrafast Microscopy) was to transfer the ultrafast electron source from the old HF2000 microscope which served as the basis for the prototype to an HF3300, a last generation 300 kV Hitachi TEM.

The installation of this microscope in a completely renovated room in 2019 was followed by several important modifications of the instrument to prepare the transfer of the ultrafast electron source. In June 2023, the first laser-driven electron emission has been obtained on the new UTEM. This achievement successfully closed the five years of the first joint laboratory.

Given the success of HC-IUMi, CNRS and HHT decided in 2023 to continue the scientific and technological cooperation in the form of HC-IUMi 2 new joint laboratory. This laboratory aims at going beyond proof-of-principle experiments and demonstrate the full potential of ultrafast electron microscopy on several cutting-edge applications in nano-optics, nano-mechanics, and nanomagnetism.

HC-IUMi 2 will be officially inaugurated on March 8.

Press release (in French) available here.

Image: © Frédéric MALIGNE / CEMES / CNRS Images