Using 3D Printing to Create Custom Items for Electron Microscopy

Creating customised vacuum-safe items and sample holders for PEMC users

As well as managing PEMC, Dr Alex Strachan looks after our suite of 3D printers which gives us the flexibility to create cost effective, vacuum-safe custom items and sample holders for use in our instruments. This means that we can more freely adapt to the samples brought to us by our users. We have a number of customised holders already available in the lab, and our most widely used are shared below. Designs can be modified from pre-existing ones, or a new design can be created with enough notice.

The team at PEMC will be more than happy to discuss the best mounting techniques and holders for your particular needs.

Designed with Techniques in Mind

A wide variety of techniques are available at PEMC and our sample holders are designed to facilitate easy and reliable analysis, be it ensuring that the sample surface is flat for good quality energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) or holding the sample at the correct angle for electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) without having to tilt the stage inside the microscope.

Holders like this pre-tilted holder for EBSD can help make complicated analyses a little easier for our users by reducing concerns about stage and sample geometry. This holder can also support two samples held at the correct angle - one on the front and one on the back - to help reduce the time spent changing samples.

Imperial & Metric

For sciences such as geology, it's standard practice to prepare the sample as a resin puck which is polished flat for analysis. These pucks can have a range of sizes which can be accommodated by the holders available at PEMC, and several can be mounted at once. Some of the most commonly used molds for these resin pucks are either 2.50 cm or one inch - 2.54 cm. That small difference in size means that some typical metal holders won't be suitable for the sample.

To combat this, we have printed holders that can hold both sizes, and both at the same time. These holders have screws to secure the sample and some have additional notches on the top surface to ensure that the sample lies flat.

Improving Efficiency

Most of the holders printed at PEMC can securely hold multiple samples to reduce the amount of sample changes in an experiment, which not only saves time but also helps maintain a good quality vacuum and beam stability during analysis. We've taken care to produce holders that can hold multiple samples where manufacturer holders may not, such as this petrological thin section holder. Typically only one thin section can be analysed at a time using standard metal holders, or two at a time by taping the thin section to a brass plate which runs the risk of damage when removing the sample.

This allows our users to make the most efficient use of their time so they can get the most analysis done during their time with us.

Useful Duplicates

PEMC is home to eight electron microscopes which are almost always in use and this means that sometimes our users need to use the same sample holders. In order to make it easier for our users to get access to the most suitable type of sample holder for their experiment, we've printed similar versions (with a few modifications that we find useful) like this stub holder using our conductive filament so that nobody has to go without.

These holders are interchangeable with the traditional metal ones also available, so there is no detriment to an experiment by changing the holder halfway through.

Adaptable Adapters

Each manufacturer has a distinct fitting for their instrument which means that it is not always possible to move holders between instruments, but we've designed a series of adapters that can be attached to some of most commonly used printed holders to help facilitate this.

As experiments grow and develop, it might become apparent that the instrument you started with isn't the best one for you by the end. By allowing our users to easily move mounted samples between instruments, we can save time that would have been spent re-mounting the sample and ensure that you get the best data possible.

Bespoke Designs

The main benefit of our in-house 3D printing is that PEMC has the flexibility to create brand new bespoke designs for specific instruments, techniques, and samples that may not be accommodated by traditional metal holders. These holders were designed specially for our JEOL NeoScope benchtop SEM, which has a very different stage to our other instrumentation and cannot use our other sample holders.

New designs take time to perfect, so if you require something we don't already have then please tell us in advance so we have time to create prototypes and test models. Once the holder is printed, we'll keep it safe with us in PEMC so that you and other users can use it again.