The World's Smallest Scanning Electron Microscope
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
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I got a chance to try out the world's smallest scanning electron microscope. But, not everything went according to plan. In theory, this machine is pretty awesome - it's portable and small enough to fit in the overhead compartment. It uses an iPad as the user interface, which is pretty intuitive. But it's just never worked well for me, because I'm at a higher altitude than the manufacturer has ever tested it, which has caused all sorts of problems with high voltage arcing.
0:00 Intro
2:07 Preparing an iPhone
5:27 How does an SEM work?
6:50 iPhone MEMS microphone
10:06 iPhone accelerometer
13:20 iPhone gyroscope
14:40 Metal coating
16:31 Cardboard
17:32 Thermal camera sensor
22:30 Challenges of making this video
A huge thank you to everyone that helped with the video. The manufacturer, the experts that advised me, and everyone that sent in things to look at. We all worked incredibly hard to make this a success, and I'm really sad we couldn't get the machine to behave.
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Music:
Stamp It Up by Peter Spacey (Licensed through bit.ly/artlist-sp) - Věda a technologie
Thanks for all the suggestions of either making a pressurized tank to put the SEM in. I think this would have been doable, but a bit tricky, as you have to deal with routing wires in and out of it, and give yourself enough room to load samples, and figure out ways of dealing with heat and things. I also really went into this wanting to show off this cool product that's supposed to be portable and work anywhere. Putting it inside of a big pressure chamber felt a bit antithetical to that! I also appreciated the suggestions of pressurizing the entire room, but that sounded like a real challenger - most rooms are very, very leaky from a pressure perspective, and my shop is no exception 😁 Things like vents in the ceiling, cracks around the doors, not to mention the sink drain. It all would have been a huge challenge to seal!
Couldn't you just dip the circuit boards in silastic, or any rubber based glue to help prevent arcing? Silastic is usually used to waterproof circuit boards but it also helps to insulate them, maybe that would make it work and keep it portable (i dont know exactly what is arcing and if it could be dipped but you could try)
Why did you not test in a lower altitude? I think you could hire an airbnb for 1 or 2 days
@@SuperStrikeagle SEMs rely on the targets being conductive so you would need to leave the target area uncoated
Simplest fix would be to get a large fish tank, and place the whole machine in it. Then have a flat glass lid, and feed through wires and such though a hole cut in the glass, and sealed with a bung of either rubber, which you slit in half and carve out channels to carry the wires, or just use some silicone sealer or simply putty. Then simply take the whole tank and get some SF6 gas, and fill the tank with it, displacing the air inside. The SF6 will act as a quench agent, but you do not have to pressurise the tank, merely displace most of the air inside. Slip top off and you can change the samples easily, no pressure difference, and the gas is dense, so slow to diffuse out, just keep the lid closed for the most part, and then after sample change simply have a brief puff of SF6 to make up, which even a small cylinder should last a few months, as the lid will keep it in. A simple silicone rubber extrusion on the top to act as a seal will hold the gas in for a good amount of time. As SF6 is very much inert, and the symptoms of it being in the atmosphere is a deep voice, just having in the shop with normal ventilation will not be much of an issue.
A bespoke enclosure for the SEM would work. It would be easier to pressurize.
Being an electron microscope scientist myself, I have three ideas what might have caused the imaging problems with your cardboard sample:
1. Inhomogenous coating. The deeper fibres were probably not coated well with Ag - so there was still charge building up within the sample. This might have caused the fibres constantly moving apart from against each other due to static electricity.
2. Cardboard is quite moist. And it wasn't dried properly beforehand, I guess. In the vaccum of the chamber, it es being dehydrated which might also cause the fibres to move due to the deformation caused by the dehydrating process.
3. You might just be using too much acceleration voltage. Cardboard is a very light material. You are losing lots of detail when hitting organic matter with too much energy since those fast electrons penetrate quite deeply and return signals from the underlying fibres as well.
iv been and SEM tech for about 10 yrs. The imaging issue doesn't look like a charging problem to me. You would expect the top to look normal and the underlying bits to be problematic not the whole thing.
Looks like it could be the vacuum isn't high enough. Would explain the low resolution, poor signal to noise, and arching that you've been having.
Try it with something conductive like a coin and let it pump overnight.
@@stuartmicklethwaite5427 when he said the product was failing because of altitude of his lab, I immediately though, of course the vacuum pump must be weak.
It makes total sense to be a problem with the vacuum.
@@monad_tcp Maybe but I'm guessing the entire circuit system isn't in the vacuum chamber. The manufacturer certainly would have considered that as it's very obvious.
My guess is the arcing is happening in the circuit that's outside the chamber and isn't fixable without a pressure chamber.
I view a lot of natural fibers such as plant, paper, spores, pollen, and organic compounds on our SEM. I find that a Gold-Palladium covering helps increase conductivity and therefore picture resolution with comes to natural fibers. Also it is helpful to put the items in a vacuum oven for an hour to make sure there is no moisture in the sample.
@@tonymorris4335 I won't pretend to know anything about these type of machines but, if electrical arcing is the only problem, couldn't you seal the problematic part of the circuit with epoxy or silicon?
The DLP chip from a projector looks awesome in a SEM!
Yeah, I had one prepared - sadly, because the SEM wasn't working properly, it really limited the samples I could look at :(
@@StrangeParts Give that microscope to Photoniduction to blow up and destroy !
@@harezy so happy his channel is back and uploading...🙌
Sonya: Take a look at Creative Electron: czcams.com/video/75y2eZKlyNM/video.html
Send him one, alone with a bottle of SF6....
Just a little tip when working with samples outside a sterile cage: Along with gloves you should wear a mask (preferably a shield) to avoid contaminating the sample with saliva droplets, especially if you are talking above them.
I was thinking about that when he was talking in direction of his sample before putting it in.
Noted
It wasn't that bad, it was frustrating yes, but you got to thinker around with something out the reach of millions of people. Thank you for your content!
*billions of people
*trillions of ants
0 Martians
@@officialspock 12 googleplex space bacteria
@@GamingStepByStep 1 me
need a 4 psi pressure tank.... that should be easy to make ... did you take the SEM to a low altitude truck stop? "SEM images on the road" seems like a good show title... did high altitude operation cause damage to the machine?
I'd just put the whole SEM in a bucket with SF6 (or R134A from the local auto parts store.)
That EDS feature is so goddamn cool! it's a shame that it doesn't perform efficiently, but I mean damn, the result you're getting now is still pretty impressive, which means that at full potential, this machine is game-changing.
Observations: 1) Your semiconductor samples show charging, and would benefit from sputtering. 2) The working distance was not listed on the UI, and is key to thick samples like cardboard (which needed full-coverage sputtering, too ). 3) Samples should be thoroughly dried. 4) Vacuum quality and chamber cleanliness are critical. It sounds like both were compromised early in your experimentation. 5) ThermoFisher has a useful guide to SEM sample preparation that could help with these common problems.
I'm really impressed with this machine, I've never thought that it would be a desktop system so soon
It is going to be very useful in the not to distant future I would think.
Me too, does anybody know whats the MSRP?
you can DIY it yourself with cathode ray tude,electron detector & a microcontroler.
me too
$65,000
So far this Electron Microscope comes out looking like an awesome product to me lol
Agreed. If it's simply an altitude issue and the manufacturer can determine a reliable limit, they just need to add this to the working specification and it's fine as long as the user can meet the environment requirements. Once the altitude range is increased they can release a new model.
Yeah I want one bad. I bought a mountain in Eastern KY and I been finding tons of coal and fossils and it would be really sweet to look at some of these things imo
Living at sea level in a flat land... where do I get one of those things.
I'm very happy that you're posting videos, even if they're not going quite right in some ways! And the message at the end of this video was very powerful and made me think about how seriously I take all my 'great ideas'
thanks for doing what you do
Kudos for choosing integrity. It shows that you're truly passionate about the subject and in the long term it will pay dividends.
its a freaking scanning electron microscope the size of a coffee machine
Check out the nGauge Atomic Force Microscope. It fits in your palm.
Even with a device that did not work well for you, you still made a really awesome video to watch. Thanks for your time in this. Hopefully that company resolves the high altitude issue and is able to send you a fix or a new one.
How far would you have to travel to reach lower altitude? A car, a motel room, and a couple of days on the road should have given you at least the opportunity to show the difference between your high altitude experience and the normal operation.
Really does seem like an easy problem to solve, at least for the sake of proving it should work as advertised, doesn't it?
@@dizzy2020 idk about you, but I wouldn't mind a multi day trip to solve a problem I've been pulling my hair out over the last 8 weeks for.
It would be totally fine to tell the name of the product! That SEM seems to be freaking awesome and the issue wasn't exactly their fault, even if they couldn't communicate more efficiently beforehand! Anyone with enough knowledge to look for a SEM product wouldn't be scared away by this video at all!
From the colour scheme and desktop miniaturisation of an SEM, I would hazard a guess that the company is SRI Instruments, which makes small gas chromatographs.
`world's smallest sem` kind of gives it away.
I got curious and searched for "world's smallest SEM" a few weeks ago, and I found this thing. Probably why this video was recommended. I live near sea level and I really want one.
The name of Japanese rice cake but with an extra i
Having worked on SEM-EDS systems, I got a bit excited by the title and agree that it's a cool idea in theory. Desktop SEMs are becoming more of a thing nowadays and I can at least think of one from one of the bigger companies that seems fine. Not sure what the specs are or the settings/reference samples that were being used for the SEM in this video but it'd be great to have a bunch of them that small but function just as well as one of the massive ones one day.
Loved your videos for a while by the way - keep it up!
micro-electro-mechanical systems are so cool, nice video man.
I just wanna say i really liked this video even though there were lots of issues you had making it. I appreciate what you do and hope you have some smoother projects next. I enjoy your content!
You are a good front-line warrior.
Stay true to yourself.
Keep up the good work. Looking forward to your next video.
Like a number of folks have already said, it would be interesting to know how many of your issues were down to the altitude and whether your experience would have been different if you had moved location. It still seems like a pretty cool piece of equipment to me.
Where'd you go man its been 4 months
I have so much admiration for your ambition. This was a huge undertaking, and it was fascinating hearing about how you figured those issues out and worked through them. I think the secret sauce of your channel is breaking open things they don’t want you to break open, and playing Around with proprietary designs that are the opposite of modular. Thanks man.
I really appreciate your honesty in pursing this video, after the last one it seemed the company was ready to solve this issue, but hearing they were also asking you to down play it / exclude it from the videos makes mess less excited about the company. It sounds like a little of both honestly and you made the right choice to protect them from those missteps in hope they continue along to resolve the issues and make more products. Thanks!
Hey great video! I ran electron microscopes for 14 years in the semiconductor industry. I can say you were pretty accurate on all your info. I can tell you really did your homework. I knew you knew what you were talking about when you mentioned the depth of field being a lot deeper on SEM over optical. Good job. Maybe you could buy some time in SEM or STEM at a collage? TEMs can see actual atoms (if you align the lattice on a silicon wafer just right). Also there is a whole world of sample prep that could help your semiconductors look better. If you get a polishing wheel and use acid to open the semiconductor die packaging you can go down layer by layer and see actual devices top down.
Hi, I love your videos! The field you've chosen to pursuit is very hard and it is completely fine by me to fail to bring video you intended to. It would be super interesting to see how did you tried to solve problems along the way. I would love to see "failed" project videos, they can be as educational and entertaining as the typical ones, but they allow you to tackle much more complicated topics. In my opinion not only it would bring different type of content to platform but it would show how hard any creative process is and that it's ok to fail as long as it's learning experience (when you are learning or pursuing experimental area). Keep up the good work and don't let the pressure to crush your spark.
This was great. Glad you did what you needed to make it. Just be confident in yourself and don't let your problems get you down. The trial and error and an honest experience is what makes your videos great. Thanks for the tip on the Allen wrenches. I'm getting some at harbor freight tomorrow.
I like strange parts your videos are entertaining and I like your personality keep up the great work dude
I'm impressed who those people are able to desing those circuits, just look at them, a really complicated devices, that's amazing
It seems like the perfect target for this product would be geologists, archeologists, and paleontologists. They could use it on site, without having any problems from moving a sample.
was thinking the same, not really lol, though only about geologists - yeah, portability is interesting
Thank you for sharing this product and your experiences in an honest manner. I appreciate that, and you Scott! Cheers!
great content. shame you had these issues with the device, atleast the company is actively working on fixing the issues you are having. good luck stay safe duder!
Hey man where have you been? Are you good?
Why did he dissapear?
I still thought the results were cool even if they did not live up to what you wanted. But... couldn't you just have moved to a lower altitude to demo it?
Seems like a lot of cost and effort to go into demoing a product where the company is I'm trying to convince you to lie and deceive your audience to hide the problem.
@@93DavidJ How is demoing it at a lower and more typical altitude deceit? Like going to the middle of nowhere with a smartphone and complaining it has no reception
@@_BangDroid_ did you not watch the video? In the video he made it clear that the manufacturer of this product wanted him to be deceitful and hide the issues he was having.
@@_BangDroid_ And your comparison about being in the middle of nowhere is complete nonsense because lots of people live in parts of the world with a higher altitude, basically the entire state of Colorado has a relatively high altitude, it's not like he is living in a remote place at the top of the mountain. The simple fact that he's uploading the video makes it obvious that he's still living in a normal area to live in. Your phone in the middle of nowhere analogy just doesn't track at all, especially because the manufacturer tried to convince him to lie and be deceitful about his trouble with the device.
@@93DavidJ I don't think that's the whole story. A) This thing is on the ISS and it doesn't get more high altitude than that. B) It's just one side of a story that doesn't make sense. He's no stranger to filming on location, it would be so easy to just demo the thing at a lower altitude and be done with it and completely avoid all this additional stress and work. C) there are MANY electronic devices that will have complications at higher altitudes: Plasma TV's, laptops, HDD's. Other things like generators or propane fridges will have problems too.
Scotty is not including the name to avoid this *rare edge case* becoming synonymous with the device, as this is probably the only video of it on CZcams.
He has no problem featuring Apple products and they're arguably the biggest and dodgiest company out there.
Super happy your making videos again. Love this channel; keep up the awesome work man.
Stay honest man, appreciate that over everything, especially in a world of retouched and beautified news, reviews and product launches. Great video ✌️
Couldn't you submerge the board that is arching in some liquid that has a higher dielectric strength than air? For example mineral oil needs 100 times more voltage than air to break down and that's why it is used in transformers.
A conformal coating would be easier. Though it seems they don't know where the problem lies, so any application would be blind.
Not even close to standard SEM magnification but but the EDX function was a nice surprise.
Regardless of all the problems that you have had with this project, it was appreciative that you could still try and highlight the SEM features by showing some of the samples that could be seen at a lower voltage. Even though, you weren't able to name the company that this SEM was from, it is very awesome that you still showed the product in some light to allow people who aren't necessarily aware that something like this exists. It was still a solid video and continued good wishes on the rest that you will make. :)
Even if it wasn't what you were planning for this video is still awesome and was definitely worth the wait, your clear enthusiasm, empathy (you can see how bad you feel for the company making the SEM for the predicament they find themselves in) and authenticity is always really inspiring to see, you're definitely someone I would love to have dinner just to talk life and whatever you happen to be passionate about at the time 😁
Where are u man? Are u getting kidnapped by Apple?
Scotty “The Plan Was” Allen haha, love this guy :)
Thanks a ton for these amazing videos! please do keep em comming my dude!
I seriously think there was no loss here! Super cool stuff, I learned a ton, thanks for the video!
Dang I had been waiting on this video and really hoped you got the microscope working but still I think its really cool.
Have you tried coming down from the mountain and testing the microscope? I'd be curious if it works well then. If so then I think you should revisit this video just to show off the samples.
I appreciate you for being honest here though.
Right, it was supposed to be compact and easily movable. Perhaps it could have been used in a tent or something.
I'm really impressed with the tact that you showed while pursuing this video. I know it's a bummer, but as a viewer, I'm really excited that you took us on the journey. "Failures" are interesting too!
Thanks for this video. It gives depth to your work. Feels premium and scarce.
Thank you Scotty for being so honest with us. I love your videos because they are so different and so individual at the same time. Keep up the great work! 😀
I just would build a pressure chamber to simulate sea level.
the old phone's camera will take better pictures than that wannabe electron junk telescope
@@mariquevandermerwe8516 yeah sure. Sure.
This is awesome Scotty @strangeparts. How does the price compare to a professional unit? Is it by orders of magnitude cheaper?
The really fancy SEMs that take up most of a room can run into the millions of dollars. A midrange unit is in the hundreds of thousands. This one is in the $50-100k range. So yes, a lot cheaper, but not really hobbyist level affordable either...
Probably more cost effective to get a second hand SEM from the 1980s off ebay, if you want to do serious stuff with it. These small SEM are nice toys to play with, but can't get anywhere near in resolution to a good field emission SEM.
@@StrangeParts 50k - 100k is way too much, I would have guessed under 1k but for that price I expect better resolution, better software and a unit that actually works.
@@leothecrafter4808 SEMs are not cheap at all. I guessed this cost a lot upwards of 50k.
@@hinz1 But does those SEM come with EDS? To me that's the greatest selling point of this machine. I do geology so the EDS imaging function is really appealing to me.
Thank you for every aspect of this project!
Dude, thank you for still putting out a video about this, you really explained the situation very well and seemed to be fair about it.
It would be so cool for you to now take the SEM to a 'perfect' environment (you said it could fit in overhead luggage compartments) and test it out in the ideal environment. I am guessing you must already have a good reason for not doing that already. Anyway cant wait for more videos.
Physical laws are immutable. Doesn't mean the product is bad in any way.
dude, sumerge the electronics in transformer oil, or build a box to put the sem in and fill the box with Sulfur Hexafluoride gas or nitrogen
So glad you made me aware of the issues at higher altitudes. Its going to change a ton of my plans lol.
Not only for the quite awesome electron microscope images, this is also cool to get to know how those tiny microphones, acceleration and gyroscopes work! Thanks :)
Sounds to me that you are overly critical of a desktop SEM. The semiconductor devices looked really good.
Dude. Call Fran at FRANLAB and spend some time with the machine in her lab. Pretty sure she's near sea level. You two would make a great collaboration.
Thank you for these videos! I feel like i've learned so much just from this one!! :D
Wow, that final segment was touching and uniquely motivating, I feel like I'm gonna cry. How was I not subscribed?
Pressurize your whole shop so the SEM will work
why not pressure the whole state ? or if we increase earths atmospheric pressure that should work aswell lul
Positive pressure ventilation is totally a thing. An expensive thing but a thing.
@@TheWittyGeek it's not the same as you actually need to increase the static pressure
Thanks for being honest
This was a really informative video! I never really knew the accelerometer worked like that!
Love your videos and technical stuff! thanks for it all!
Random question, what is the Arduino on top of your "normal" microscope for?
Seems to be an ESP8266 or ESP32, two wires are going to the side of the lens and seems to be connected to a photoresistor.
Scotty in another comment:
"Yes! It's an automatic camera switcher for when I stream on Twitch - it switches to the microscope camera when I look through the eyepieces, using a simple photoresistor.
"
I feel so bad for him, he’s just trying to make good content. And he’s trying so hard to make it work ):
Another great video, thanks for making my Saturday more interesting
This is amazing. Keen to see more and thank you.
I would have just rented a room at sea level and called it a day
Miss working with a SEM. Good memories.
Sorry to hear that its not working for you.
Crazy cool piece of equipment. Sad it didnt work as well as you’d hoped. Thanks for sharing !
Scotty this video was awesome. I think by adapting your narrative to working through the issues would have been really interesting, especially for such a cool product.
Anyone know what happened to Scott
Where are you Scotty?
You have some of the most interesting content on CZcams. I love your videos, keep up the great work!
Real people making real videos is what I enjoy watching on CZcams. You fit that bill, which is why I continue to watch your videos. Thank you for being you.
Please add some lighting in the background. I really want to see some of the background. It will also make the video more popping.
As someone that had privy info in a factory things are not as they seem even to the people that work there.
When the manufacturer fixes the problem, I would love to see 2 videos. A) This device working properly, and B) a tour of their factory showing everything they did to solve this issue, even if it is an "edge case". THAT would be fantastic! Hopefully it happens.
I really appreciate the tact you showed in this video. It's a bummer it didn't work out as well as you or the manufacturer wanted it to, but I still got to see a great video, and hopefully the manufacturer got to learn about and solve an issue before it becomes a "real problem".
It's always a great day when Strange Parts posts a vid!
SF6 is a wonderful gas. It's heavy and dielectric. Take an aquarium and put the SEM into it, fill up with SF6 and run. Should easily reduce arcing at altitude. As a level indicator you could use a balloon with ordinary air.
SF6 is used in modern SEM and TEM as insulator inside the high voltage tank. SF6 is also used in under ground power stations to reduce the size compared to power stations above ground.
I ran into this technology when reading up on SEM and TEM a number of years ago when I got a couple of old microscopes. My old SEM and TEM use standard transformer oil though.
The product obviously is poorly designed with not enough gap margin for isolation.
How come other products designed at near water levels that are also present in his lab have no issues?
The reason other products in my shop don't have this issue is that nothing else I have runs at such high voltages!
@@StrangeParts Ehh I was expecting someone to bring this up, shame it's you and you don't get it.
The thing is that this "offset" is a percentage of the nominal voltage, meaning that if same standards are applied to a product that runs 10kV and one that runs 110V then if the 10kV one fails in X conditions, the other 110V product running in same X conditions also would fail.
So if you have professional equipment running just fine at your lab, then if you have something that fails, it didn't adhere to the standards and so has been unprofessionally designed.
@@Arek_R. Well where he is a plasma TV will be pretty much at the edge of operation, simply because the design relies on atmospheric pressure to allow internal structures to be supported, which is a reason they have to be transported in pressurised cargo, and the pressure altitude has to be low enough that they do not fail during transit.
@@Arek_R. I think you have a poor understanding of the differences between high and low voltages. And also a poor understanding of just how unique a device like this is compared to virtually any other electronic you might encounter.
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Knowing all the time you spent on this, the least I could do was watch the entire video including the ad, something honestly I never do. This to me is an adventure channel, just like someone exploring a foreign country I'll never get to see. When they drove up to find the place closed due to Covid, that disappointment was part of the adventure. What we got here seems like a summary of your journey, but you can take us for the ride good or bad. Videos showing failures along the way are okay. Don't be apologetic when showing the losses, that's all part of the trip. And makes the victories that much sweeter.
Keep up this amazing work bro, you are an amazing example to everyone!
I look forward to your vids man, love it! Keep up the content please lol.
Could you make one of those lightning captured in acrylic sculptures on a small scale? I think they use an electron beam to charge an acrylic block, then hit it with a nail to release the static charge into the block which melts the "lightning strike" inside the block. That would be cool to try.
Thank you for putting honesty above all else. That really resonates with me as I do the same in everything I do
Hi there I just want to say that I appreciate your morols and even that you didn't name the manufacturer. Well done
Thanks for a great follow-up video.
Nice to see new videos ❤️
even if it doesnt work 100 % perfect , the idea itself is amazing , and those people must not give up on it , its amazing
Thanks for your frankness about the whole process and the problems with the device. I can see your dilemma. It is good to be fair to all parties involved. Even if one sugests to "cut corners". As a viewer I like to know about that.
Really nice video..so not get frustrated..sample preparation is an art. Even with lab scale SEM's the same issues are observed.
Liked the technical content...appreciate the integrity!
Bless you Scotty, for your honesty and for pushing through even though it was not going to be up to the standards you set out for yourself.
This is so very cool! Using a very sophisticated electron microscope to pick on some detail on these electronics. And then realize that these electronics were made by machines, on these scales. Really puts into perspective what an incredible human achievement it is to be able to make these chips, and put them in cheap throw away phones.
While the machine surely has it's issues, i LOVED the explanation of accelerometer and gyroscope, absolutely insane how that works and you explained it in such an easy to understand way!
I hope you can get a working version of a similar machine, i'm certain you'd put out even more awesome videos!
Thank you for your honesty 👍
I really hope the manufacturer manages to solve the altitude issues. It would be fantastic to see a follow up video of it actually working. the EDS feature was like pure magic and soo freeken cool.
I feel smarter after watching this strange parts dude makes easy digestion of knowledge great style, never boring should be main stream 😀