Tergeo-EM Plasma Cleaner

TEM and SEM plasma cleaner

Tergeo-EM plasma cleaner for cleaning TEM/SEM specimen holder, samples and activating cryo-EM grids.

The Tergeo-EM plasma cleaner is designed to clean TEM specimen holders, TEM/SEM samples, and TEM/CryoEM grids. It supports wide range of process gases, such as oxygen, argon, nitrogen, hydrogen, water vapor, and various mixtures (e.g., Ar+O_2, Ar+H₂, ambient air, etc) to generate a low-energy, reactive gas plasma to remove surface contamination on TEM/SEM samples and specimen holder, it can also  activate cryo-EM grids and in-situ chips, rendering surfaces hydrophilic or creating specific positive or negative surface charges.

TEM sample plasma cleaning requires much gentler and more precisely controlled plasma than traditional plasma process, especially for plasma cleaning and treatment of TEM grids made of monolayer graphene, graphene oxide, ultrathin (1~3nm) carbon. The plasma must effectively active the surface (CryoEM), remove hydrocarbon contamination while minimizing ion bombardment and chemical etching to the grids. The Tergeo-EM plasma cleaner solves this challenges with unique continuous/pulsed and direct/remote plasma modes, offering etching rate control across more than three orders of magnitude. While conventional plasma systems destroy fragile graphene oxide grids in seconds, the Tergeo-EM’s pulsed remote mode can clean them safely for minutes without structural loss. This unmatched versatility makes it the perfect system for treating sensitive TEM grids and delicate 2D materials. In high power direct mode, Tergeo-EM can also be fast enough to remove thick layer of carbon contamination in a minute.

The Tergeo-EM plasma cleaning system has been widely appreciated by the researchers in TEM, SEM, Cryo-EM field worldwide. More than half of our sales are brought by former users that moved to different research institutes and companies and still miss the unique capabilities of Tergeo-EM that traditional TEM plasma cleaning system can’t offer.

Here are the unique features that set Tergeo-EM system apart from traditional plasma cleaning systems:

1.  Two plasma sources (CCP and ICP) in one system: high speed direct/immersion mode CCP plasma source and gentle downstream/remote mode ICP plasma source. Tergeo-EM can be faster enough to clean thick layer of e-beam induced carbon deposition, remove capping layer for failure analysis and be gentle enough to clean 1-3nm ultra-thin holey carbon grids or graphene oxide grids for more than 10 minutes without damaging the fragile grids. 
2. Continuous and pulsed plasma can change the plasma intensity by several orders of magnitude. Support a wide range samples. Versatile and easy to use.  By combining the downstream mode ICP plasma source and pulsed mode operation, the Tergeo-EM system can generate extremely gentle flow of reactive radicals to process graphene and other 2D materials without damaging it.
3. Realtime plasma Intensity sensor provides quantitative feedback on the plasma intensity for different recipes. Take the guesswork out of the daily usage.
4. Water vapor (H₂O) plasma replacing the dangerous H2 + O2 gas recipe. Water + oxygen plasma is great for removing e-beam cross-linked polymers/contamination. Water vapor plasma can also render the sample surface super-hydrophilic by depositing high-density OH* functional groups on the surface. Great for Cryo-EM & liquid in-situ TEM. Of course, Tergeo plasma system also supports ambient air, pure argon, oxygen, hydrogen, or mixture of those gases.
5. No scheduled maintenance: Tegeo-EM plasma system has excellent track record of reliability. Many systems have been in service for 10 years without scheduled maintenance from us.

Specifications

1. Compatible with all major microscope brands: Thermo Fisher, JEOL, Hitachi, TESCAN, Zeiss/LEO, and more. Each front door supports two standard specimen holders, and custom adapters are available for specialized TEM systems.
2. Supports up to three process gases simultaneously. Can generate plasma with wide range of process gas, such as Ar, O₂, H₂, H₂O, N₂, Air, SF₆, CF₄. Can mix different process gas at any ratios using the integrated MFC.
3. RF power supply: 0-75Watt or 0-150Watt adjustable at 1-watt interval. 13.56MHz frequency rf power supply with fully automatic impedance matching. 13.56MHz plasma can be more than 10X more efficient than low cost KHz rf power supply at the same rf power setting.
4. Support direct (high speed) mode and remote (gentle/downstream) mode plasma cleaning.
5. Can generate continuous high intensity plasma and pulsed gentle plasma.
6. Etching speed can be adjusted from more than 200nm/minute to less than 0.01nm/minute.
7. Monitors the plasma intensity in real time to guide user to set up the recipe and monitor stability of recipes.
8. Fully automated operations with intuitive user interface. Recipes can specify: rf power wattage, continuous/pulsed plasma, cleaning mode (direct or downstream), gas flow rate from each of the three gas channels, cleaning durations, and after-cleaning purging action.

Worldwide customer base

Used by leading institutions worldwide such as: MIT, Harvard, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UIUC, NIH, EAG Laboratories, McGill University Canada, CNRS France, multiple Max Planck Institutes Germany, University of Leeds U.K., Tsinghua University China, NUS Singapure, Seoul National University Korea, Australian National University, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Brazil, warsaw university of technology Poland, etc. Researchers consistently praise Tergeo-EM for its ease of use, versatility, and reliability compared to traditional TEM/SEM plasma cleaners. More than half of our sales are from former users moving to different institutions or from referrals.

Customer publications

For a more complete list of our customer publications that mentioned our Tergoe-EM plasma system in the field of TEM research, especially in Cryo-TEM research, please search it on Google Scholar ( click HERE for the linked search results). Here are some selected publications:

1. High-speed high-resolution data collection on a 200 keV cryo-TEM
2. 2.5 Å-resolution structure of human CDK-activating kinase bound to the clinical inhibitor ICEC0942
3. Efficient graphene oxide coating improves cryo-EM sample preparation and data collection from tilted grids
4. Structural basis for recognition of N-formyl peptides as pathogen-associated molecular patterns
5. Cryo-EM structures of the SARS-CoV-2 endoribonuclease Nsp15 reveal insight into nuclease specificity and dynamics
6. Efficacy of boron nitride encapsulation against plasma-processing of 2D semiconductor layers
7. Integrated cryoEM imaging center at Seoul National University, Korea
8. Constructing oxide/sulfide in-plane heterojunctions with enlarged internal electric field for efficient CO2 photoreduction
9. Cryo-EM structures of an insecticidal Bt toxin reveal its mechanism of action on the membrane
10. Calcineurin-fusion facilitates Cryo-EM Structure Determination of a Family A GPCR
11. Rigid monoclonal antibodies improve detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein

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