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A comment on 24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron.

Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by kalimanzaro on Saturday April 23, 2022 @08:40PM (#31140166)
That looks like a giant van der Graaff in the background. Powers the microscope or just the optics?
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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by COGlory on Saturday April 23, 2022 @09:31PM (#31140445)
I am an electron microscopist and I am thoroughly confused by what I am looking at. The article simply labels it as "the worlds largest electron microscope" which is confusing because size is not really a measure of electron microscopy as far as I'm aware. Perhaps voltage or resolution? The contest took place at NIMS which is well known for EM but I've never seen any photos like that one:

https://www.nims.go.jp/eng/research/group/electron-microscop...

Anyways, if that's a TEM my guess is the contraption at the top is more about the source (providing high voltage to the emitter) than the optics. Optics don't require much power, a single electron is not difficult to manipulate at all. What's harder is getting a coherent electron beam at the voltage you need (i.e. 300 kV+).

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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by kalimanzaro on Sunday April 24, 2022 @05:29AM (#31142479)
Oops I intended that as a pun on (the abuse of) the word 'optics' in PR/marketing/media/politics..
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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by SAI_Peregrinus on Sunday April 24, 2022 @01:30PM (#31146190)
It looks like a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier. So it's the power source.
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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by tullatulla on Sunday April 24, 2022 @03:33AM (#31142000)
Those have nothing to do with the microscope.

A STM is basically a very sharp needle flying just above the surface and measuring the tunneling current with a few volts applied at most. It's rather small, most space will be taken up by the vacuum chamber and cryostat.

Other electron microscopes (TEM or SEM) cannot resolve molecules / or would fry them with their high voltage/currents...

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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by kalimanzaro on Sunday April 24, 2022 @05:35AM (#31142501)
The article mentions that the race venue used to house the world's largest (traditional, HV) electron microscopes at one time. I thought it would be cool if these towers were actually for that but it seems likely the place is just a science museum of sorts now. Or maybe they are some sort of fancy (electrostatic) dust collector?
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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by tullatulla on Sunday April 24, 2022 @08:14AM (#31143323)
Oh yes you are right!

That's apparently part of the first 1MeV TEM. Should be the high voltage source for the electron gun. The electron optics were most likely magnetic, not electrostatic.

There is a whole movie about it:

https://images.cnrs.fr/en/video/1257

Later MeV TEMs looked very different, and are now replaced by aberration corrected tools...

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Re:24-hour race won by molecule that traveled 1 micron by foota on Sunday April 24, 2022 @03:10AM (#31141903)
It seems like that was where the event was held: https://www.cemes.fr/Nanocar-Race-II-1463?lang=en

Unclear if that's part of the equipment or not.

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