Having representatives from equipment manufacturers visit and give a technical presentation is considered an effective way for lab technicians and researchers to learn new ways of handling/operating specific lab equipment. Recently, NANOTEC hosted the visit of Dr. S H Lau, Vice President of Business Development from Xradia to give a talk on “Non invasive 3D and 4D Characterization of Buried and Hierarchical Structures in Soft & Hard Materials with a Lab based X-Ray Microscope (XRM)”.

“Soft Material and biological tissue characterization is difficult with almost all imaging modalities – from optical microscopy to SEM or TEM, which often require time consuming and extensive sample preparation” said Dr. Lau. “By employing phase contrast techniques similar to its synchrotron counterpart, imaging contrast in XRM for soft materials and biological tissue in 3D are increased substantially”.

Dr. Lau also used this opportunity to discuss on correlative microscopy to SEM, FIB SEM, EDS and TEM and the emerging field of in situ 4D microscopy.