The NSF grant comes under the auspices of the Curriculum, Course & Lab Instrumentation Program, which focuses on new ways of teaching undergraduate science. This article is about five professors who were awarded an impressive National Science Foundation or NSF grant for the procurement of an environmental scanning electron microscope.
The scanning electron microscope is most useful in studies of surface of material, morphology and the cross sections of multilayer structures of cells, microscopic organisms, and microorganisms with great detail. The scanning electron microscope can also be used to write nanometer patterns in a resist layer. Since the invention of electron microscopy, it has been a most powerful and resourceful tool for investigating the structure of cells, tissues, microorganisms and other microscopic objects. In the study of interfaces, boundaries, and various point, line, or planar defects, electron microscopy offers distinctive advantages over other techniques because individual defects and their interactions can be observed directly. With the advent of new lens designs and field emitter technology which had greatly advanced in this age of technology. It is now possible to resolve spatial features that are too small and to study a sample area as small as 1 nm with high beam intensity with high accuracy and precision so microscopic organisms and bacteria or living tissues or cell can be thoroughly and correctly examined. These advantages are grave when the chemical nature of point or line defects or the composition of small precipitates is being investigated since these particles are microscopic. The microstructure revealed under a transmission electron microscope at magnifications up to more than a million times often provides important clues which help us understand how different processes change materials’ properties.
The grant for $148,600 is a matching grant, with NSF providing $74,300 of the total matched by UWSP. According to the professor of biology, Sol Sepsenwol and the principal investigator for the grant, this state of the art scanning electron microscope or SEM will substitute a 14 year old SEM that no longer can handle the new teaching and research demands of students and faculty. The new SEM will be greatly automated and easy to use, so that, for the first time, the SEM can be used by students as part of their upper level biology course laboratories. It can build extraordinarily clear images of plant and animal samples up to 5,000 times magnification, in 3D stereo if most wanted, with no special preparation. Moreover, the co principal investigators on the grant are biology faculty Virginia Friere, who specializes in bryophytes like mosses and the tiny liverworts which can be precisely examined under the electron microscope.
The fresh, unpreserved samples can be observed directly without the usual three to five hour preparation that is now required is the key feature of the new SEM. The latest machines are all computer controlled and simple to operate. These features make it practical to use the SEM in upper level biology courses, especially in the areas of entomology, or the study of insects and botany. This also means that the microscope operation can be made handicapped accessible, so they too can enjoy the benefits, developments and advancement in microscope technology. Read the entire article