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Aduro

In Situ Heating and Electrical Biasing

Aduro is a versatile and scalable platform for quantitative electron microscopy. The Aduro products revolutionize the analytical capabilities of electron microscopes by providing the ability to conduct both in situ electrical analysis and in situ heating at temperatures up to 1200 °C, while maintaining the maximum resolution of the instrument. No other commercial solution enables real-time, dynamic thermal and electrical analysis in a fast, versatile, high-resolution and easy-to-use package. Aduro allows you to develop products faster, understand materials better and perform research more efficiently and quantitatively. Aduro is compatible with new and existing electron microscopes and can bring expanded capability to your system. With better resolution comes quantifiably better analysis and results. You’re developing materials that will change the world, and Protochips is developing products to help you get there.

 

adurocollage

Stable Heating and Electrical Biasing

Aduro is a product platform, available for all major microscope manufacturers and most modern TEMs and SEMs. All products use the same consumable Aduro E-chips allowing for correlative studies between instruments including TEM and SEM. Aduro is a very flexible and versatile tool, enabling the thermal or electrical analysis of samples by simply replacing the consumable E-chips that support the sample. The functionality of the platform is based on the type of E-chip you choose rather than the holder. The unique membrane heater within the thermal E-chip provides extremely high thermal stability and low drift. These features allow you to achieve the maximum resolution of your microscope, even at temperatures over 1000 °C. In addition to a high degree of control and accuracy, Aduro can heat and quench with rates up to 1000 °C per millisecond, capturing material changes and dramatically increasing your understanding of dynamic events. Aduro electrical E-chips build on this platform, providing several materials options and electrode layouts to support electrical studies using a variety of analytical techniques. Ease of use is a hallmark of the Aduro software interface with capabilities to adjust temperature, current and voltage, plot, log and save your results, and even create your own programs for repeat studies.

In Situ Heating and Electrical Applications

Aduro is ideal for studying:

  • Sintering
  • Rapid thermal cycling and lifetime testing
  • Grain growth
  • Phase changes
  • Quenching
  • Diffusion
  • Dynamic reactions
  • Rapid thermal annealing
  • Recrystallization
  • Ultra-high and high temperature studies

Aduro can be used with a wide variety of samples:

  • Nanoparticles
  • Thin films and coating
  • FIB sections
  • Core/shell systems
  • Alloys
  • Liquid metals
  • Nanotubes
  • Discontinuous metals

Atomic Resolution at 1000 °C

In situ microscopy at 1000 degrees Celsius imaged in an Aduro heating holder

 

Courtesy of Dr. Larry Allard, Oak Ridge National Laboratories

Features and Benefits

Electrical and thermal analysis

  • A single system provides a flexible platform for research

Direct heating of support film

  • Very accurate temperature control of sample

Robust semiconductor ceramic material

  • Inert, ultra-high stability and low drift, capable of reaching temperatures from ambient to 1200°C in 1ms,

Consumable semiconductor specimen support devices

  • Disposable design eliminates cross-contamination and provides compatibility with virtually any TEM/STEM/SEM instrument.

Product Specifications

Temperature Range

Ambient to 1200 °C

Electrical Stimulus

4 electrical leads

Tilt

Single or Double Tilt

Device Size

Approximately 4 mm X 5.8 mm

Observable Area

500 microns X 500 microns

Power Requirements

100/220 VAC

Why Aduro Is Quantifiably Better

Atomic Resolution

The unique membrane heater on the thermal E-chip provides extremely high thermal stability and low drift. Utilize the maximum resolution of your microscope, even at elevated temperatures. 

Temperature Accuracy

Every thermal E-chip is individually calibrated, has a unique temperature calibration file, and samples are in direct contact with the heating membrane. This combination ensures highly accurate temperatures.

Fast

Aduro can heat and quench with rates up to 1,000 °C per ms. You can go from room temperature to 1200 °C and back to room temperature in just a few milliseconds. This speed, combined with the resolution capability and temperature accuracy, enables you to acquire better quality data in less time, capture material changes that were not possible with traditional heating techniques and dramatically increase your productivity. 

Flexible

The Aduro can heat or measure electrical properties of samples. The functionality of the platform depends on the type of E-chip you choose, not the holder. Switch between electrical biasing and heating simply by using a different E-chip. With multiple functions in one, Aduro is a very flexible and versatile tool. 

Electrical Biasing

Protochips offers a wide variety of electrical E-chips with functional electrode layouts for electrical biasing experiments. With the many options available in this family of devices, you can easily customize your experiment and minimize time spent designing experiments.

User Friendly

The Aduro platform comes complete with easy-to-use Protochips software, which makes doing heating and electrical experiments highly accessible for everyone. You can easily adjust the temperature, current and voltage, or build and save automatic programs and run the same heating or biasing program over and over.

Quantifiable

Aduro is compatible with analytical tools commonly found on electron microscopes. EDS, EELS, STEM and diffraction techniques are among the compatible tools, which enables quantifiable results in both the TEM and SEM using Aduro. 

Correlative Microscopy

The E-chips, power supply and software are compatible with both the TEM and SEM platforms; only the physical holder is different. The ability to image, heat, and bias a sample on the same E-chip™ in both TEM & SEM adds significant flexibility and provides correlative data to augment your research.

A Complete System

The ultra-fast temperature changes, flexibility, fine control and accuracy of temperature, and image stability provided by Aduro, enable new in situ EM techniques. Examples include, imaging dynamic events at atomic resolution at any temperature, quickly capturing time-resolved EDS of a reaction and comparing it to video, and electrically biasing samples using the same hardware and software. Aduro unlocks many novel techniques for in situ electron microscopy.