Gatan pre-announces advanced 2nd generation direct detection camera

Gatan, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) is developing an advanced direct detection camera for Cryo Electron Microscopy.

• Gatan's 2^nd generation direct detection camera ("K2") will have four thousand by four thousand 5 µm pixels and is produced in advanced 0.18 µm CMOS technology.
• The sensor is read at 400 frames per second using highly parallelized, low noise electronics capable of counting individual electrons. Hardware based in-line processing can pinpoint electron entry coordinates with sub-pixel accuracy raising the net resolution to 8k x 8k pixels.
• An advanced radiation hard layout in combination with the finer feature size of the 0.18 µm CMOS technology node allows an unprecedented radiation hardness exceeding several Giga electrons per pixel.
• A high-speed next generation data and storage interface is capable of streaming 400 full resolution frames per second to the host computing system and supports the most demanding data processing and display requirements.

Current camera offerings in the marketplace based on 1^st generation direct detection technology fall short of the unmatched resolution, speed and radiation hardness inherent in the Gatan’s 2^nd generation technology. The first full scale cameras will be ready for testing by the end of 2010. 

  

	Gatan K2 (2nd generation direct detection)	Manufacturer A (1st generation direct detection)	Manufacturer B (1st generation direct detection)
Operating voltage (kV)	Up to 1250	Up to 300	At least 200
Sensor size (pixels x pixels)	4k x 4k	4k x 4k	3k x 4k
Pixel size (μm)	5.0	14.0	6.0
CMOS technology node (μm)	0.18	0.35	Unknown
Read‐out speed (full frames/s)	400	0.4	25
Digitization (bits)	14	16	Unknown
Integration mode	Yes	Yes	Yes
Electron counting mode	Yes	Unknown	Yes
Sub-pixel counting mode	Yes	No	No
Net resolution (pixels x pixels)	8k x 8k	4k x 4k	3k x 4k
MTF @ 0.5 Nyquist (300 kV)1	0.33	Unknown	Unknown
DQE @ 0.5 Nyquist (300 kV)	0.3	0.3	Unknown
Radiation hardness (Me‐/pix)	Several 1000’s	Several 100’s	Unknown
1 Integration mode. The counting and sub-pixel counting modes will have significantly higher MTF and DQE.

This development program combines the unique expertise of three geographically close partners Gatan, UCSF, and LBNL. Gatan is the long time leader in the development and sale of scientific camera systems for electron microscopy with 25 years of experience spanning 7 generations of camera technology. UCSF is a long time leader in TEM applied to structural biology with leading experience in scientific research, software, and hardware development. LBNL has extensive experience in the design of radiation hardened CMOS active pixel sensors for Particle Physics, and most recently also for Electron Microscopy as part of the TEAM project.

For more information on Gatan's 2^nd generation direct detection camera, please contact your local Gatan Sales office.