Acquisition of Oxford Instruments’ Automated Feature Analysis Capabilities for Scanning Electron Microscopes at the Electron Microscopy Center

On behalf of the Electron Microscopy Center (EMC, College of Engineering, ASTeCC building), the PI is proposing the acquisition of a hardware and software package, to enable automated scanning and feature detection in samples analyzed on the EMC’s electron microscopes. Using this new capability, researchers will be able to rapidly locate regions of interest in large samples, automatically find and classify particles, contaminations, or other small features that are challenging to find. To the PI’s best knowledge, this capability is not currently available at the University of Kentucky, and researchers must manually search for specific features while actively utilizing the microscopes or on previously acquired large area scans. The proposed AZtecFeature package will do this laborious work, saving considerable time for researchers and enabling the scans of larger regions or more samples. The proposed solution will be added to current electron microscopes housed at the EMC and be fully accessible to all users across campus, in the same way as other characterization equipment available in the center. Instrument maintenance and user training will be performed by existing EMC staff members. This new capability will support research for multiple energy-related applications and will complement other instruments available at the EMC.