Anomalously high elastic strain
measured near grain boundaries in an annealed sample of Ni-based superalloy using CrossCourt 4 HR EBSD.
Monolayer detection in 2-D materials
Here, the fact that PiFM measures polarisability of a sample is used to detect a 0.5nm monolayer on a grain of MoSe2.
EBSD of a steel at 1045C
courtesy of Bernhard Sartory, Materials Center Leoben.
PiFM map of PMMA AlO PS
Block copolymer structure. Structures within this of the order of 5nm are measured. PMMA AlO PS.
Acutance Scientific Ltd
Our products
HR EBSD
CrossCourt maps all 9 components of the strain tensor at 10’s of nm spatial resolution scale, together with Geometrically Necessary Dislocations and stress maps, using EBSD data.
PiFM
Vista IR chemically maps samples at the ~5nm spatial resolution scale, with applications in bioscience, polymers, 1D/2D materials, semiconductors, plasmonics amongst others, using Photoinduced Force Microscopy.
Tensile Stages
The TS1500 and TS1000 in situ tensile stages retrofit to most SEMs. They are designed by EBSD experts to give optimal EBSD performance, with excellent field record.
Heating Stages
The HSEA1000 and HSEA500 in situ heating stages retrofit to most SEMs. They are designed by EBSD experts to give optimal EBSD performance, with excellent field record.
About us
Acutance Scientific Ltd.
Acutance Scientific Ltd. was founded by Dr Ian Holton in 2011 with the aim of bringing highly innovative nano instrumentation to real problems in the research community. It has been a great pleasure, over the last 10 years, to bring such new real solutions to solve real research problems and to see new nano instrumentation take off and grow as a result.
At present, new technologies which really excite us are Photo-induced Force Microscopy, a sub ~5nm NanoIR technique which has considerable advantages over conventional techniques such as sSNOM and TERS. We are equally excited about CrossCourt HREBSD, a technique uniquely capable of measuring all nine components of the strain tensor on the 100 nm spatial resolution scale.
Ian Holton was Research and Development Director/Chief Physicist of various nano instrumentation companies, and Managing Director of an Electron Microscope company, before founding Acutance Scientific Ltd.
Acutance Scientific Ltd
Our process
Understand
Our first aim is always to understand the experimental aim and requirements for a desired project.
Provide
Our first aim is always to understand the experimental aim and requirements for a desired project.
Ensure
Our first aim is always to understand the experimental aim and requirements for a desired project.
Out in front
Innovative compositional analysis
Acutance Scientific brings the most innovative tools in compositional analysis to the market. From mapping the full distortion tensor and Geometrically Necessary Dislocations at the Electron Microscope resolution to the revolutionary technique of Photo-induced Force Microscopy, here is a combination of instruments of the future and quality/performance benchmarks.
It is only possible to give a very limited presentation of the capabilities of these instruments on this website.
Please contact us for further details.
Updates
Application Notes
Grain boundary strain in annealed nickel base alloy
A study using High Resolution (HR) EBSD to investigate anomalously high elastic strain measured near grain boundaries in an annealed sample of nickel based superalloy.
Read More
