Welcome to the Electron Microscopy Laboratory, hosted in the Department of Materials Engineering at the University of British Columbia.
We are a research and teaching shared facility that operates and supports a number of electron microscopes, an X-ray diffractometer, and a sample preparation laboratory. We are primarily based in Frank Forward 419, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, with additional equipment in the Brimacombe building.
We focus on materials characterization. Academically, the lab and it’s resources are used by individuals from all across UBC as well as commercial clients. Core to our mission is teaching and education, and we support teaching within the Materials Engineering Undergraduate program, and train researchers (typically graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) in the Department of Materials Engineering and across UBC. Additionally, we operate on a ‘fee for service’ characterization for our academic and commercial clients.
Academic leadership is provided by Dr Ben Britton and technical support is provided by Heli Eunike. There are also a wider number of other academic users who benefit from our facility and help support our mission.
Training and access information:
In the Electron Microscopy Laboratory, we welcome users into a community that is curious about the materials that shape our world. Together, we build knowledge and practical skills in advanced materials characterization, with a focus on electron-based techniques supported by X-ray and optical methods.
Training in the facility is a partnership between our users and our experienced team of trainers and technical staff. We aim to offer fair access to instruments and to help our users collect high-quality, reliable data that can support a wide range of research questions.
Our training includes a mixture of written guides, short videos, and hands-on training to help our users learn in different ways. Our resources are designed to:
- Help users operate instruments safely and confidently, including returning each instrument to a standard state at the end of each session so it is ready for the next user.
- Provide users with a solid foundation in how each technique works and when to use it, often starting with standard samples and structured, step-by-step activities.
- Encourage users to treat every measurement as an experiment, thinking carefully about what they want to learn and how to collect the most useful data in the time they have available.
As users gain experience, we hope that users will grow as talented microscopists and develop their own style of working with these instruments. Of course, our team can sometimes run samples for users or offer advice to improve experiments, but we also encourage our users to explore best practices and build their independence over time.
The instruments in the facility are both delicate and valuable, with a total replacement cost of more than sixteen million dollars. Everyone plays a role in caring for them by working carefully, reporting any problems, and recording their use in the logbook and booking system. This shared responsibility helps keep the facility safe, reliable, and welcoming for all users.
We would like acknowledge that the land on which our labs are situated is the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) People.