DREAM

Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) has become an essential tool for the development of many scientific fields (nano-materials and nanotechnologies, biology, energy, environment, ICT, earth sciences, ...), as for the industrial needs (microelectronics, chemistry, transport, pharmaceuticals ...). Today, electron microscopes offer complementary material analysis capabilities to those provided by Synchrotron sources, FELs (Free Electron Lasers) and laser optics. The FEG (Field Emission Gun) sources of TEMs have intermediate brightnesses between those of the synchrotron and FELS sources but with probe sizes typically two orders of magnitude lower (100 µm or less), comparable energy resolution (5 meV or less) and with temporal resolutions that approach the sub-ps regime in some specific modes of operation. TEM is the only technique that allows the study of local properties, at the atomic or atomic column scale, of (nano) materials. It also offers extensive in situ study possibilities: objects can be studied at very low or very high temperatures, in liquid and gaseous atmospheres close to those used in many industrial processes. Electronic tomography provides 3D information complementary to that acquired by X-ray, electron holographic methods can image at a few nanometers magnetic fields, electric fields and even deformation fields ... It is therefore very logically that TEM has been identified in the 2016 ESFRI roadmap with the vision of pushing the technique and the instruments beyond the current limits: towards ultimate spatial and energy resolutions, a sensitivity to single atom, fs temporal resolution, operation at very low voltages (<20 kV), the ability to study materials and systems in operando, the possibility of mapping three-dimensional fields, etc. The ambition of our consortium is to develop a new European infrastructure dedicated to advanced TEM that will meet future scientific and technical issues in the fields of physics and materials as well as biology. Achieving such an infrastructure requires addressing a number of issues, and removing the technical, legal and financial barriers that arise when creating infrastructure of this scale. It also requires bringing together and convincing all stakeholders from different communities, physicists, and biologists, microscopists and users of synchrotron radiation (RS). For such a project, the EC has set up a tool, called "Design Study", which objective is to answer the preliminary questions of feasibility in order to prepare the“maturation of a European Infrastructure project afterward. The Design Study project "DREAM" will then have to specify the administrative, legal, financial (conceptual issues) and scientific and technical points through the following WPs: o WP1: Governance, Legal structure and IP strategy o WP2: Location, link with SR infrastructures and Users strategy o WP3: Data managements; e-needs o WP4: Business model and Sustainability o WP5: New instrumentation