HILLSBORO, Ore., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ohio State University's Center for Accelerated Maturation of Materials (CAMM) has become the first North American site to install and begin using the world's highest-resolution, commercially-available scanning/transmission electron (S/TEM) microscope, the FEI ( NASDAQ:FEIC ) Titan(TM) 80-300. This new system yields powerful sub-Angstrom (atomic scale) imaging and analysis capabilities.

With the sub-Angstrom imaging of the Titan, researchers at Ohio State's CAMM labs will have a greatly enhanced ability to make new discoveries on the structure-property relationships of a wide spectrum of materials. Close coupling of computational methods with the now more detailed experimental validation at the atomic level will make new materials development cycles much shorter at significantly reduced costs.

"CAMM embarked upon a joint project with FEI Company to develop an advanced S/TEM platform aimed at providing researchers with an accurate physical picture of the materials they are modeling," said Dr. Hamish Fraser, director of CAMM. "We are happy and enthusiastic to see that it has resulted in such a powerful tool -- on time and beyond performance expectations -- that will play an indispensable role in our effort to develop new methods for sophisticated characterization and computational models to accelerate new materials development cycles. The demonstrated quality and stability -- from crate to sub-Angstrom in just one week -- has created excitement among our students and post doctorates."

The Titan's dedicated platform for corrector and monochromator technologies is highly automated and provides leading-edge stability, performance and flexibility. The microscope enables deep sub-angstrom resolution making way for the highest performance available in both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) modes. The Titan's upgradeable design not only enables larger nanotechnology and national research centers to afford dedicated aberration corrected TEM technology, it opens the door to universities and companies with staged funds to position themselves for the future.

"The FEI Titan S/TEM is an extraordinarily powerful and stable system," said Rob Fastenau, senior vice president of FEI's NanoResearch and NanoBiology market divisions. "Shortly after the installation at Ohio State was completed, the system was able to produce an information limit around 0.7 Angstrom and atomic resolution in STEM mode within minutes of each application. It is this very flexibility, stability and performance that will allow combining ultimate information with new results and have high analysis throughput."

The Titan S/TEM was introduced in August of this year. Additional installations of the first-shipped systems will soon be completed in North America and Europe.

About CAMM

CAMM at Ohio State University is a unique collaboration between government, industry and academia chartered to develop new methods to accelerate the maturation of materials technologies. It seeks to combine computational tools with thorough experimental validation, and one of its tasks is the development of new experimental tools, where needed. The joint development of this new tool is an excellent example of the collaborative efforts that are required to maintain a competitive position in industrial segments that depend on evolving materials technologies.

About FEI

FEI's Tools for Nanotech(TM), featuring focused ion- and electron-beam technologies, deliver 3D characterization, analysis and modification capabilities with resolution down to the sub-Angstrom level. With R&D centers in North America and Europe and sales and service operations in more than 40 countries around the world, FEI is bringing the nanoscale within the grasp of leading researchers and manufacturers and helping to turn some of the biggest ideas of this century into reality. More information can be found on the FEI website at: http://www.feicompany.com/ .

This news release contains forward-looking statements that include statements about future performance and new applications of, and development work through, our Titan TEM. Factors that could affect these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the inability of customers to develop and deploy the expected new applications or to achieve the development work. Please also refer to our Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, Forms 8-K and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for additional information on these factors and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. FEI assumes no duty to update forward-looking statements.

Source: FEI Company

CONTACT: Dan Zenka, APR, Director, Worldwide Public Relations of FEI
Company/Corporate Headquarters, +1-503-726-2695, or dzenka@feico.com

Web site: http://www.feicompany.com/