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3. Oct. 2016
The winner of the award from the International Engineering Fair 2016 goes to a device called LiteScope by a young company NenoVision, which was established as the first spin-off of the Central European Institute of Technology. This additional device to electron microscopes enables not only the imaging of a sample in 3D but also to measure magnetic and electric properties of a sample by the means of atomic force microscopy.
„Atomic force microscopy is not something we have invented. But what we have done differently is to develop a device that is smaller, more simple and cheaper. Plus it works in the very inside of the microscope,” Jan Neuman, one of the founders of the company NenoVision, explained. It was established by doctoral students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT, who were working under the leadership of professor Tomáš Šikola, and also initially a significant amount of help was given by the South Moravian Innovation Centre.
This device, which was officially introduced in June of this year, has won the gold medal not only thanks to the fact that this innovation originated from the cooperation of a research institute and a company. Moreover, the company is offering a brand new technology of measuring, which enables the overlapping of pictures from a classic electron microscope and an additional atomic one by means of software. “Each picture contains some information about the researched surface. Thanks to our device, the users, who are analysing their samples, are able to read much more information from the resulting correlative imaging than it was possible before,” Neuman added.
LiteScope has its use for example in the field of research of material sciences, solar cells, chips, microcircuits or semiconductors. “The news is that we are dealing with the possibility of using our product in researching biological samples,” Neuman clarified. The additional device LiteScope may be used in a combination with more than a half of electron microscopes of various makes on the market. Currently the representatives of the company are negotiating with major players in the field of microscopy about the extension of their offer with this optional accessory.
„Brno is the centre of electron microscopy and BUT and subsequently CEITEC BUT has historically been a very strong international player in nanotechnologies. So it is not surprizing that our scientists have succeeded in establishing the first spin-off in the field of surface imaging and analysis,” the Executive Director of CEITEC Markus Dettenhofer commented on the success of the young company.