Goodbye, Titan!

After over a decade of enabling groundbreaking research, the time has come to bid farewell to our beloved Thermo Fisher Scientific Aberration Corrected Titan 80-300, which will be decommissioned in May 2025.

Installed in 2012, the Titan quickly became a cornerstone of AIF. With its aberration-corrected electron optics for sub-angstrom resolution, monochromator for high energy resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy, ChemiSTEM for fast, high-resolution EDS mapping, EMPAD detector for 4D-STEM, and OneView camera for high-speed imaging enabled an era of imaging and analysis that redefined what was possible at the atomic scale. For many researchers, it was not just a piece of equipment—it was a trusted partner in their journey of materials research and discovery.

Over the years, this instrument contributed to hundreds of projects, spanning microelectronics, metallurgy, ceramics, nanotechnology, catalysis, and beyond. From revealing the exact placement of dopants in semiconductors to mapping strain in two-dimensional materials, its capabilities transformed the questions we could ask—and answer.

“u003cemu003eThe Titan was instrumental to my research career, enabling fundamental insights into complex materials that would have otherwise remained out of reach. Beyond its scientific contributions, this instrument played a key role in the economic development of North Carolina—through the students it helped train who remained in the region, and through fruitful collaborations with industry partners such as Protochips, Adroit, and Wolfspeed, to name a few. I am deeply grateful to the staff of the Analytical Instrumentation Facility for their expert stewardship of the Titan over the years—their dedication made these achievements possible. I have no doubt that the new Spectra will be equally well supported, and will continue this legacy of excellence for years to comeu003c/emu003e.u0022u003cbru003e- Jim LeBeau, former NC State Materials Science and Engineering professor and former AIF associate director

In the coming months, we’re excited to welcome the next-generation Thermo Fisher Spectra UltraSTEM. But before we look ahead, we take a moment to honor a true giant in our lab’s history—quietly powerful, endlessly precise, and deeply appreciated.

This post was originally published in Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF).