Enabling Autonomous Electron Microscopy for Networked Computation and Steering

Conference · Sat Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/eScience55777.2022.00040· OSTI ID:1909137

Al Najjar, Anees ^[1]; Rao, Nageswara ^[1]; Sankaran, Ramanan ^[1]; Ovchinnikova, Olga ^[1]; Mukherjee, Debangshu ^[1]; Roccapriore, Kevin ^[1]; Ziatdinov, Maxim ^[1]; Lupini, Andrew ^[1]; Kalinin, Sergei V. ^[1]

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1. ORNL

Advanced electron microscopy workflows require an ecosystem of microscope instruments and computing systems possibly located at different sites to conduct remotely steered and automated experiments. Current workflow executions involve manual operations for steering and measurement tasks, which are typically performed from control workstations co-located with microscopes; consequently, their operational tempo and effectiveness are limited. We propose an approach based on separate data and control channels for such an ecosystem of Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes (STEM) and computing systems, for which no general solutions presently exist, unlike the neutron and light source instruments. We demonstrate automated measurement transfers and remote steering of Nion STEM physical instruments over site networks. We propose a Virtual Infrastructure Twin (VIT) of this ecosystem, which is used to develop and test our steering software modules without requiring access to the physical instrument infrastructure. Additionally, we develop a VIT for a multiple laboratory scenario, which illustrates the applicability of this approach to ecosystems connected over wide-area networks, for the development and testing of software modules and their later field deployment.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) (SC-21)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1909137
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English