The World's Smallest Scanning Electron Microscope

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.

See behind the scenes at Strange Parts:

Music:

[StrangeParts]

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!

[lordroo]

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.

[nelsoncabrera]

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.

[douglasortega]

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!

[Joemama]

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?

[mikeselectricstuff]

The DLP chip from a projector looks awesome in a SEM!

[chadeller]

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.

[kortex]

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.

[apekind]

I'm really impressed with this machine, I've never thought that it would be a desktop system so soon

[Kaminoextragalactic]

So far this Electron Microscope comes out looking like an awesome product to me lol

[RubenLightfoot]

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

[daviddelille]

Kudos for choosing integrity. It shows that you're truly passionate about the subject and in the long term it will pay dividends.

[anonimus]

its a freaking scanning electron microscope the size of a coffee machine

[Digital-Dan]

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.

[insoYT]

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!

[patco]

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.

[aam]

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.

[syedhassaanmujtababokhari]

Where'd you go man its been 4 months

[rivers]

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.

[benjaminlee]

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!