Industry support
The Centre for Advanced Microscopy supports industry and commercial clients across a broad range of sciences and engineering. We have dedicated expert microscopy and microanalysis staff from various disciplines, including health and medical sciences, biology, material sciences, chemistry, geosciences and engineering.
What we provide to industry and commercial clients:
Fee for service:
- expert advice for design of studies and technical guidance in sample preparation techniques for microscopy
- professional analytical services by experienced operators with a fast turn-around time
- data collection, analysis and reporting on all aspects of sample examination
- competitive pricing
Training and access:
- sample preparation and instrument training, tailored to your needs
- open-access use of all CAM instrumentation, once competency is reached, at a competitive hourly rate
Collaborative industry support:
For more complex research challenges, take advantage of our expertise to solve your problems. Contact us to discuss your needs and ask for a quote for collaborative work.
Industry Subsidy Scheme
Microscopy Australia has established an Industry Subsidy Scheme that provides support to Australian companies for work performed at Microscopy Australia facilities, such as CAM.
Areas of Imaging and Analysis
CAM’s instruments provide high resolution imaging or microanalysis in the following areas:
MedTech
At CAM we support manufacturing of therapeutic products, including vaccines and medicines. Our specialists use negative staining at ambient temperature and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (Cryo-TEM) to e.g. monitor loading of small molecules into nanoparticles (liposomes) - see image above. We also perform quality assessment of nanoparticle size, membrane homogeneity etc.
Agriculture and Food
Various formulations of food, beverage and agriculture products (e.g. fertilisers/support microbes, additives, and contaminants) can be analysed and characterised by Light, Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy. Below are a couple of examples from Microscopy Australia:
Biochar: from garbage to agricultural booster
Mineral Exploration and Mining Industry
Knowing the distribution, composition, shape, and size of minerals in gangues is fundamental in identifying the abundance of economically critical elements in ore deposits and understanding their physical properties for extraction during separation processing. The FEI Quanta QEMSCAN provides fast and accurate identification of mineral phases displayed in maps along with further critical information such as mineral modal percentages, porosity, density and minerals associations. Elemental distribution and concentration in mineral phases are further attained with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometry (EDS) and Wavelength Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometry (WDS) analyses. This helps determine the levels of elements from major to trace amount.
https://micro.org.au/news/enabling-cost-effective-mineral-exploration/
Rapid Data-Intensive Microscopy Processing Workflows & Powerful Hyperconverged Super-Compute Capacities
CAM cooperates with National Computational Infrastructure (NCI Australia) to streamline and underpin an expansive range of advanced microscopy processing workflows with our private-cloud compute capacity and NCI Australia’s hyperconverged infrastructure.
Contact us
If you would like to discuss how your business/projects could benefit from our support, please contact Assoc. Prof. Melanie Rug; 02 6125 7649; melanie.rug@anu.edu.au