The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded £4.9 million in funding to the University of Glasgow to build a new electron microscopy facility for materials science.

Researchers from the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy have long-standing expertise in the study of functional materials, including the magnetic films used for data storage, materials for energy applications, and semiconductor technologies.

The new microscope, named MagTEM2, will help support materials projects across the university, and will also be accessible as a facility to national and international users from 2026.

The microscope will incorporate the latest improvements in spectroscopy to help study the chemistry and electronic properties of materials. A key advance will be to incorporate electron detectors developed by Glasgow researchers working in collaboration with CERN. These give “unprecedented” sensitivity and speed in detecting the electrons used for imaging samples in the microscope.

The funding will also allow researchers to develop enhanced electron microscopy techniques to improve the spatial resolution for magnetic materials, down to the level of individual atoms. Such resolution has previously been limited by the need to immerse samples in the strong magnetic fields required to focus electron beams.

Speaking on the MagTEM2 microscope, Professor Donald MacLaren, co-investigator for the project, said: “Functional materials like batteries, semiconductors and sensor technologies underpin the modern world, but can be difficult to study with enough resolution in time, energy and space to fully optimise their performance.

“This new microscope will provide that resolution and help support the University of Glasgow’s ambition to lead the development of nano and quantum technologies.”

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Professor Stephen McVitie, the project’s principal investigator, also added: “Glasgow has been an international centre for electron microscopy for more than 40 years and this new investment will now enable us to study magnetic materials on the atomic scale.

“This is critical because we collaborate with manufacturers to develop data storage devices using magnets that are only a few atoms in size.”

MagTEM2 will be housed at the University’s Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre.