Imago Scientific Instruments was a company founded in 1999 by Dr. Tom Kelly. At that time he was the Director of the Materials Science Center at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

, but left his tenured position in 2001 to guide the company's growth. Imago commercialized the Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP), providing a new type of

atom probe The atom probe was introduced at th14th Field Emission Symposium in 1967by Erwin Wilhelm Müller and J. A. Panitz. It combined a field ion microscope with a mass spectrometer having a single particle detection capability and, for the first time, ...

microscope which is literally orders of magnitude faster in many performance criteria than any other recently delivered atom probe microscope. Imago (name comes from the Latin word for image or picture) has not only improved the instrumentation available for atom probe

tomography Tomography is imaging by sections or sectioning that uses any kind of penetrating wave. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, plasma physics, materials science, astrophysics, quantu ...

, but has also developed many sample preparation techniques that are key enablers for the 3D sub-

nanometer 330px, Different lengths as in respect to the molecular scale. The nanometre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: nm) or nanometer (American and British English spelling differences#-re ...

compositional information that the microscope provides. In April 2010 Imago was purchased by

Ametek AMETEK, Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate and global designer and manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices with headquarters in the United States and over 220 sites worldwide. The company was founded in 1 ...

ME-NYSE which is also the parent of CAMECA. The company was merged with CAMECA as part of

's Materials Analysis Division.{{cite book, doi=10.1016/B978-0-12-385985-3.00001-8 , title=A History of Cameca (1954–2009) , year=2011 , journal=Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics , volume=167 , pages=1–119 , last1 = de Chambost , first1 = Emmanuel, isbn=9780123859853

References

External links

For a recent review of atom probe tomography applications, see Microscopy and Microanalysis Volume 13 (2007)CAMECA websiteatomprobe.com is the CAMECA sponsored site for all users of atom probe tomography
Technology companies established in 1999 1999 establishments in Wisconsin