Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Understanding and controlling ‘strain’ in materials is fundamental for materials scientists working on the performance of materials. The strain and/or lattice distortion caused by local changes in chemistry or stress, can have significant effect on mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties in a wide range of materials. Therefore, determination of strain in a processed, failed, or natural sample will have ramifications in almost all fields of materials science and solid-state physics. It is anticipated that the proposed tools will provide us a strong capability to measure the local strain state of materials at the nano scale, and the requested system will be highly used for many ongoing research works at Queen’s and the area around. It will enable us to generate results and data that are directly applicable to a wide range of industry including power generation and transport in Canada. It will train HQP directly in techniques and relevant research areas which are of current and ongoing interest to industry. Currently, the only method proven capable of measuring strains at spatial resolutions of 1nm is transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This is a critical lengthscale – it is the lengthscale that controls dislocations, the fundamental mechanism of plasticity.