The TEAM Project Pioneering developments of aberration-correcting
electron optics have created the unprecedented opportunity to directly
observe the atomic-scale order, electronic structure, and dynamics
of individual nanoscale structures by advanced transmission electron
microscopy. It is foreseeable that aberration corrected electron microscopes
exhibiting deep sub-Ångstrom resolution with single atom sensitivity
and an increased time - and energy resolution can be constructed within
the next few years. The substantial expense of developing and maintaining
such aberration-corrected electron microscopes is beyond the ability
of individual investigators or even university centers. To
address this need, the Department of Energy’s electron beam
microcharacterization centers proposed the development of a new generation
of advanced electron microscopes built around aberration-correcting
optics. The TEAM project (Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected
Microscope) was initiated as a collaborative proposal involving five
DOE-supported electron beam microscopy efforts, located at Argonne
National Laboratory, Brookhaven
National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research
Laboratory. The vision for the TEAM project is the idea of providing
a sample space for electron scattering experiments in a tunable electron
optical environment by removing some of the constraints that have
limited electron microscopy until now. The resulting improvements
in resolution, the increased space around the sample, and the possibility
of exotic electron-optical settings will enable new types of experiments.
The project was presented to the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in October 2002. As a DOE Project, TEAM is subject to specific rules that control its progress via a series of critical decisions CD0-CD4. CD0 (Mission Need) was granted in May 2004, CD1 (Alternative Selection and Cost Range) was signed in September 2005 after a critical design review in April 2005. The Conceptual Design review was signed in April 2006, and the CD2/3 review (Approval of Project Baseline/Readiness to Execute) was signed in December 2006. TEAM is guided by a scientific advisory committee. The project is a collaboration of several DOE-funded efforts and two commercial partners (FEI and CEOS). Led by the National Center for Electron Microscopy, the project pursues several key developments in parallel, with each partner responsible for a specific set of tasks (ORNL – STEM corrector, UIUC – beta stage, ANL – Cc corrector, CEOS – correctors, FEI – column). The TEAM project is part of DOE’s 20-year roadmap of Facilities for the Future of Science, and after its completion in 2009, the instrument will be made available to the scientific user community at the National Center for Electron Microscopy. The machine is being implemented in two stages – TEAM 0.5 will become available as a user facility in October 2008 and TEAM I in October 2009. TEAM OutreachInput from the scientific community in the form of workshops, discussions and presentations has been important in shaping the project since its inception.
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