Scientific Advisory Board: Leading pioneers of modern electron diffraction

Fri, 03.04.2020

The academic-industrial board met online to start work. ELDICO will benefit from the extensive hands-on experience of some of today’s most experienced scientists. The board will help develop instrumentation that meets the requirements of the international crystallographic community. 

ELDICO Scientific has appointed a first-class Scientific Advisory Board consisting of pioneers in electron crystallography. In light of the travel bans triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, we decided to conduct the meeting online instead of waiting. This decision proved to be the right one: a very constructive and meaningful discussion around the latest findings and technology brought relevant new insight for ELDICO’s product development.  

Four outstanding representatives from science and industry are now supporting the company in developing its electron diffractometer. 

Dr. Ute Kolb: since 2001, head of the Centre for High Resolution Electron Microscopy (EMC-M) at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany; in 2012, appointed Professor at Faculty of Materials Sciences and Geo Sciences Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany.

 Dr. Mauro Gemmi: since 2010, director at the Center for Nanotechnology Innovation@NEST of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Pisa, Italy, which is a reference center for electron diffraction tomography.  

 Dr. Bernd Hinrichsen: head of the XRD, electron microscopy and NMR labs at BASF AG, Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF Research runs 12 electron microscopes, four of which are TEMs.  

 Dr. Tim Grüne: since 2019, head of the Centre for X-ray Structure Analysis at the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Austria. Tim is the author of the award-winning paper in Angewandte Chemie Int’l Ed. that appeared in 2018, marking the beginning of the ELDICO journey.

Dr. Jeroen van Bokhoven: since 2010, Associate Professor of Heterogeneous Catalysis in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Van Bokhoven works in the field of heterogeneous catalysis and (X-​ray) spectroscopy. Goal is the determination of structure-​performance relationships, which aid the design and construction of better catalysts for cleaner and more efficient processes.

According to the Scientific Advisory Board, electron diffraction is indeed still a hassle, particularly in an industrial environment (patent infringements, inclusions, etc.); the operation of a TEM is too microscopist-oriented – though the same would apply to academia. Further conclusions involved the advantage of a  tilting over an arbitrary axis to greatly reduce dynamical scattering; deciding that focusing on the micro-probe STEM for the imaging mode was the preferred way to go; and the best alternatives to the type and positioning of an HAADF detector, which means that the development pursued by ELDICO Scientific is in line with scientific and industry expectations.

Do you want to learn more about ELDICO Scientific? You are interested to meet us at scientific conferences or events? Stay tuned! Contact the team at info@eldico.ch. Or simply subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media!

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