Frontiers of Electron Microscopy in Materials Science

The 14th Frontiers of Electron Microscopy in Materials Science (FEMMS) meeting was held at the Mantra Lorne, on Australia’s Great Ocean Road, from the 8th to the 13th of September, 2013. The meeting, attended by 132 delegates, including 40 invited speakers, brought together established researchers, instrument manufacturers, postdocs and students to share their latest findings and accumulated experience in electron microscopy techniques and applications. The biennial FEMMS meetings, dating back to 1986, are most frequently held in the USA, though they have also been held in Europe and Japan. This was FEMMS’s Australian debut. In the southern hemisphere, September was early spring rather than early fall, and so the traditional pre-dinner break was replaced by a post-lunch break, giving delegates the opportunity for discussions whilst walking along the beach front or scaling the foothills into the Australian rainforest. The FEMMS Distinguished Lecturer was Professor Christian Colliex. His talk, entitled “Beyond the present frontiers: exploring new territories in materials science with the upgraded STEM”, offered enticing visions of synchrotron-in-a-STEM, optical-bench-in-a-STEM and how much easier than anything else hydrogen will be to see once we can resolve phonon excitations.