Liquid Crystal Institute hosted the MSNO (Microscopy Society of Northeastern Ohio) Winter Meeting of 2012 on February 22nd. 45 participants, mostly microscopy-related professionals from Cleveland-Akron-Kent area, toured the newly renovated LCI cryo-TEM lab and the new LCI AFM lab.
Later in the evening, Dr. Min Gao from LCI, gave a talk titled “Direct TEM imaging of Liquid Crystals”. Liquid crystals represent a very challenging group of materials for direct TEM imaging, so replica imaging is the current dominating technique. Dr. Gao presented his recent practice on modifying TEM specimen preparation and observation procedures, and demonstrated successful sub-nanometer scale resolution imaging and application of Z-contrast imaging and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The second talk, “Murphy’s Law and Machine Malfunction: Different Failure Modes and Philosophy of Scientific Analysis”, was given by Dr. Chris Bagnall, from MCS Associates Inc., Latrobe, PA. Dr. Bagnall has more than 30 years of experience in failure analysis. He presented some very interesting examples of machine malfunction and explained different modes of machine failure and his philosophy of scientific practice.
The LCI cryo-TEM lab currently supports about 15 research groups from (LCI/CPIP, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Department of Biological Sciences), NEOMED, and Ohio State University, and industry users from Ohio and Massachusetts.
