New research equipment installed at The University of Western Australia will support innovative multimodal and correlative microscopy to address national needs in energy, critical minerals, environment, agriculture and health research.
Launched by Minister for Science and Innovation, the Hon Stephen Dawson, the multimodal microscopy suite represents an investment of around $20 million through university, State and Federal Government funding through NCRIS Microscopy Australia and ARC LEIF.
The new infrastructure sits within UWA's Centre for Microscopy Characterisation and Analysis, which is the Western Australian Microscopy Australia Facility.
Microscopy Australia's open access policy ensures that researchers anywhere can access the facilities and its dedicated expertise to deliver high-quality training and support for the best possible research outcomes fostering collaboration between academia and industry.
UWA Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Anna Nowak said the new multimodal microscopy suite would expand capability to undertake highly advanced imaging analysis.
"This new research infrastructure will enable our researchers to investigate samples from the macro to the nano scale," Professor Nowak said.
"It's exciting for us to have access to this technology in Western Australia for the first time, particularly the nano-SIMS which is one of only three in the world currently.
"It allows us to take elemental and isotopic images at very high resolution a few thousand times smaller than a human hair, which is small enough to see inside an individual cell.
"As an example of how it could be used, if you were developing a new type of drug and wanted to see how that drug was working inside a cell, it could be used to capture that impact."
The collection of new advanced imaging tools includes a state-of-the-art Serial Block Face - Scanning Electron Microscope, high-resolution confocal microscope, and an upgrade to Large Geometry Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (LG-SIMS) funded through Microscopy Australia, as well as WA's first light sheet microscope (ARC LEIF) and Australia's only high-resolution nano-SIMS (funded by UWA and supported through Microscopy Australia).
