Run time: 60 minutes

Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) allows the observation of materials under controlled relative humidity thanks to the presence of a water vapor environment and the control of the sample temperature. Under specific conditions of pressure and temperature, the observation of liquid suspensions is possible without any encapsulation. The specificity of ESEM with respect to other commercial solutions lays in the surface information from FEG-SEM low-acceleration voltage combined with the possibility of carrying out in situ hydration and de-hydration cycles. Moreover, the large sample chamber allows for implementation of additional built-for-purpose sample stages, and python-based scripting enables repeatable experimentation.

During this webinar, Karine Masenelli-Varlot, professor at INSA Lyon, will present the principles of liquid-phase experiments in ESEM. Key parameters will be highlighted through experiments performed on various samples and discussed considering published literature. She will present a novel recent INSA Lyon development: an “electron tomography in ESEM” stage allowing automated alignments and acquisitions with precise dose control. These developments will be illustrated by experiments from biology and materials science, including in situ examples.

In this webinar you’ll learn:

• How hydrated and liquid samples can be studied with ESEM in their native state at the nanometer scale
• Key parameters for successful experiments on hydrated and liquid samples using ESEM
• A fast, fully integrated solution for three-dimensional analysis on hydrated or liquid samples using ESEM

Speaker:

Karine Masenelli-Varlot, Professor, INSA Lyon

Karine Masenelli-Varlot is a professor at INSA Lyon, one of the top Institutes of Technology in France. With more than 25 years of electron microscopy experience, she has been driving innovation in ESEM investigation with her students and colleagues through novel in situsub-stage development.

She obtained her PhD in materials science in 1998 on the chemical analysis of polymers at the nanoscale using electron energy-loss spectroscopy in transmission electron microscopy (TEM). She joined the “MATerials Engineering and Science” laboratory at INSA in 2002 as an assistant professor, where she worked on the relationships between the microstructure and the functional properties of polymer-based nanocomposites. She started to develop electron microscopy tools at that time, including electron tomography in ESEM. She obtained a full professor position in 2007 and broadened her expertise by developing electron microscopy tools for in situ/operando studies on various types of materials. She has supervised 20 PhD students and co-authored more than 80 papers. She was distinguished by the Institut Universitaire de France in 2009.

In parallel, she teaches physics and applied math for international undergraduate students at INSA Lyon and manages the CLYM microscopy center, part of the French network METSA. Dr. Masenelli-Varlot is an executive member of a multidisciplinary laboratory of excellence and graduate school.