Public Funding for Iss Group Services Limited

YPS intends to develop a purpose built upgrade solution for a thermionic based transmission electron microscope (TEM). This product will utilise a field emission source at an electron energy of 100 keV that will improve the source brightness by at least 500x. This will allow users who are unable to afford a high-end cryoEM the opportunity to extend the capabilities of their existing instruments at a fraction of the cost of a high-end TEM. YPS will partner with the world-renowned Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB), which has a large concentration of cryoEM users and expertise and who will guide the overall development. This involvement will ensure that the needs of end-users for such technology are adequately met. Equally as important, their involvement will serve as a means to validate the developed technology. YPS specialise in the manufacture of field emission electron sources (thermal and cold type), which it distrbutes world-wide, and the development of novel solutions for high-end electron microscopy. In addition, YPS also manufacture field emission guns (FEG), high voltage EHT units and feedthroughs for electron beam based instruments. YPS has successfully developed and demonstrated technology to upgrade thermionic-based scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) to FEG types, thus significantly improving their resolution and low voltage operation which is useful to use in the inspection of radiation sensitive and nanotechnology materials.