The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 07, 2010
Filed:
Jun. 27, 2008
Michael Frederick Hayles, Eindhoven, NL;
Uwe Luecken, Eindhoven, NL;
Michael Frederick Hayles, Eindhoven, NL;
Uwe Luecken, Eindhoven, NL;
FEI Company, Hillsboro, OR (US);
Abstract
The invention relates to the extraction of a frozen hydrated sample for TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope) inspection, such as a vitrified biological sample, from a substrate and the attaching of said sample to a manipulator. Such a hydrated sample should be held at a cryogenic temperature to avoid ice formation. By melting or sublimating a part of the sample material outside the area to be studied in the TEM and freezing the material to the manipulator (), a bond is formed between sample () and manipulator. This makes it possible to transport the sample from the substrate to e.g. a TEM grid. In a preferred embodiment a part () of the manipulator () is held at a cryogenic temperature, and the melting or sublimation is caused by heating the tip () of the manipulator by electric heating of the tip and then cooling the tip of the manipulator to a cryogenic temperature, thereby freezing the sample () to the manipulator.