The Engineering platform, with a staff of 7, brings together the electronics, mechanics and charged particle optics departments. It participates in instrumental development in a multidisciplinary context, notably around vacuum technologies (UHV), high voltage, cryogenics, photonic optics and optics of charged particles (electrons and ions).
Missions:
– To be a technical partner of the scientific and technical community in CEMES.
– To advise and assist researchers in the analysis and expression of their needs.
– To translate the needs of scientists into appropriate technical solutions.
– To produce and/or modify the electronic and mechanical components of scientific equipment.
– To follow up on outsourced tasks if necessary.
– To participate in the communication of results.
Christian Pertel, leader
Camera under development
These two departments available to research groups and technical platforms offer the following tools:
Department of electronics:
Abdelouahed Lasfar, Christian Pertel (leader), Francisco Varela (Alternant ingénieur Polytech Montpellier)
Department of mechanics:
Pierre Abeilhou (leader), Olivier Auriol, Bertrand Gatti
Charged particle optics (CPO) is a science that compiles under a common theoretical base all the laws governing the transport, focusing, mass/energy dispersion, etc. of charged particles that can be electrons, positrons, ions or molecules. It allows the description of the optical properties of all the usual individual optical elements (lenses, energy filter, magnetic sector, etc.) and thanks to the multiple combinations of these elements, it allows the creation of a wide range of tools for the characterisation of innovative materials. For years, applications in this field have been considerable: development of increasingly powerful electron microscopes, focused ion beams that have opened the way to nano-manufacturing, and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), an essential tool for characterising dopants in semiconductors.
The service offers its expertise in OPC issues following a methodology described in the figure below. Depending on the request, the service can design a specific optical system, or imagine modifications of an existing system, and then propose a simulation of the optical characteristics of the new system. These simulations will be carried out using state-of-the-art commercial software (such as SIMION or EOD), but also using codes developed within the department. The service can go as far as optimising the optical system before handing over to colleagues from the instrumentation platform (electronics, mechanics) if the applicant wishes to finally build the system in view of the simulated performances.
Finally, the members of the department assist users with heavy or regular maintenance of optical systems originally developed within the department (such as the FemtoTEM or HC-IUMi ultrafast microscopes, for example), as well as commercial transmission electron microscopes when the microscopy department of the characterisation platform requires specific expertise.
Robin Cours, Florent Houdellier (leader)
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