12th August 2022 | Author: Iain Anderson
Travelling from High Wycombe (UK) to Portland, Oregon (USA) to visit M&M2022 clocks in at around 20 hours… which is plenty of time for anticipation of what was to come, and with this being the first in-person M&M for 3 years there was a lot to ponder during the trip.
And top of my mind with all the recent travel disruption…
As the focal point in our events calendar, M&M is the perfect opportunity for us to showcase our recent product developments to existing, new and prospective customers, and while it’s a great opportunity to speak to a huge number of attendees there are of course far more people in the microscopy community who didn’t attend than those who did! So, for those of you that weren’t there I’ll round up some of my personal highlights – but before moving on I should answer the questions I left hanging.
The logistics ran smoothly and despite a few hiccups we had an amazing booth ready to go and everybody made it to the event on time with our luggage!
While footfall was a little lower than pre-Covid years, there were still lots of people and I think many of the attendees were as excited as we were to be back live – virtual events haven’t dulled our appetite for real human interaction!
Now that the live event has closed it’s possible to attend M&M On-Demand starting 15th August to access both platform and poster presentations… there’s a registration fee if you didn’t attend live but otherwise it’s free to access. It’s a neat idea to broaden reach, and if you’re interested then you can find the details here. Quite where the balance of Virtual, Live and Hybrid ends up is still in the balance, but it’s nice to see some experimentation.
Firstly, we showed off our new EBSD data processing tool, MapSweeper, which offers several capabilities to enhance or reindex datasets using pattern matching to either kinematical or dynamical models. It’s ideal for improving your data when working on highly deformed materials, nanocrystalline samples, high-precision dislocation analysis or trying to determine semiconductor polarity. The video attached explains not just the power of this technique but also the speed we are able to achieve with our unique approach.
Improving Data from EBSD Experiments using Pattern Matching Techniques (20 minutes)
Secondly, for WDS we showed some teaser videos of the functionality that is coming in our next software release - automation and mapping. Our detector design offers EPMA-like performance operating from within a familiar AZtec user interface, and it is the only one of its kind offered on SEM. If you’re unfamiliar with WDS but struggle with X-ray peak overlaps, or want accurate detection and quantification of trace elements, then our introductory tutorial (25 minutes) might interest you.
My final highlight was sharing the Oxford Instruments booth with the other brilliant businesses within our group. It’s always a pleasure to spend time with colleagues from other parts of our group and as well as demonstrating our EM analytics we had plenty of other techniques on show, all offering class-leading performance, including:
It was a pleasure to meet many of you in person at M&M, I’m constantly amazed by the incredible work done by our customers, but for those of you that missed it I hope this has been a useful guide to some of the new tools and techniques we are offering – and if you want to know more, please just get in touch!
Iain Anderson,
Product Marketing Director, Oxford Instruments
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