Cutting-edge research needs cutting-edge equipment - and not every institute can provide this on its own. This is why TU Wien has the USTEM, the University Service Centre for Transmission Electron Microscopy. Here, research teams from different faculties and departments receive support when it comes to analysing tiny structures, investigating new materials and uncovering the secrets of matter on a nanoscale.

‘The USTEM is a great success story,’ says Prof. Johannes Bernardi, who heads the facility. ‘We have grown significantly over time and the team now consists of eleven permanent employees. Our technical equipment is first class: We have a whole range of different devices at our disposal and are continuing to expand our offering this year.’

‘Electron microscopy is indispensable in a wide range of research areas today. The USTEM therefore plays an important supporting role in the scientific work of TU Wien and makes many first-class research projects possible in the first place,’ says Prof Peter Ertl, Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and International Affairs at TU Wien.

Long tradition

Electron microscopy at TU Wien has a long tradition - it began long before the USTEM was founded. The first transmission electron microscope (TEM) was installed as early as 1942. This was sensational at the time: the first TEM had only been delivered by Siemens and Halske in 1939. The device from the TU Vienna (at that time still a technical university) had the serial number 25.

However, it did not stop there: more powerful devices were purchased time and again in order to fulfil the growing tasks. At TU Wien, TEMs were used in the field of biosciences and for physics/material sciences and catalysis research.

High-tech for everyone: the founding of USTEM

In the late 1990s, the idea of setting up a joint, interdisciplinary microscopy pool at TU Wien was born. From the outset, this pool of equipment was to be managed by a dedicated team. This team was not only to support internal TU research groups with new high-performance equipment, but also be available for co-operations with other research institutions. These efforts were driven by Peter Schattschneider (Physics) and Herbert Stachelberger (Chemistry), supported by the then Rector Peter Skalicky.

After negotiations with the Ministry of Research, approval was granted in 1999, and in January 2000, exactly 25 years ago, USTEM was actually able to start - at that time with two TEM devices, under the direction of Prof. Peter Schattschneider.

‘The plan worked, USTEM became more and more established and was used intensively by research groups at TU Wien and external partners,’ explains Johannes Bernardi. ‘New equipment was added - new transmission electron microscopes, a scanning electron microscope, modern focussed ion beam devices and state-of-the-art equipment for preparing samples.’

Optimal place for research

For a long time, the eighth floor of the Freihaus on Wiedner Hauptstraße was the home of the USTEM. However, due to the constant growth of the institution, new locations were repeatedly considered. ‘The USTEM was actually supposed to move into the newly built teaching wing on the Getreidemarkt campus,’ says Johannes Bernardi. ‘But over the years, the demands and requirements for the equipment increased, so it soon became clear that we would need a different location after all.’

This issue has now been resolved: the USTEM is to move to the Prater in Vienna this year, to the new purpose-built building on the Atominstitut site with optimised laboratories for the sensitive equipment.

The future: even higher quality

The USTEM's track record is certainly impressive: Around one hundred research projects are carried out at the USTEM every year, in around 30% of which the USTEM team is also directly involved as a research partner. Since 2014, the USTEM team has produced 329 publications and 431 conference papers - not even counting those publications that were produced without the team's involvement but using USTEM equipment.

The role that the USTEM plays in teaching is also important: students have the opportunity to learn how to use transmission and scanning electron microscopes and to conduct independent research on high-end equipment. Over the last ten years, more than 1000 students have been trained on the scanning and transmission electron microscope.

The further development of the USTEM will not come to a standstill in the future either: ‘We are very pleased that we will be able to put new high-end devices into operation, especially this year in our anniversary year, a plasma FIB, a unique time-resolved TEM, which will be used by Philipp Haslinger's group for exciting quantum experiments, as well as a double lens aberration-corrected analytical state-of-the-art TEM,’ says Johannes Bernardi. ‘This will make the USTEM one of the top centres in Europe in the field of electron microscopy, with state-of-the-art equipment and a top team.’