The ALBA Synchrotron building in Spain has launched the Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA (JEMCA), offering electron microscope services to the scientific community. The new center is unique in Spain, as it is the only facility that complements the synchrotron light source with electron microscopy services. This collaboration has been financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) with a budget of 5.8m euro.
The JEMCA currently houses two microscopes: the Cryo-TEM and the METCAM. The Cryo-TEM microscope is coordinated by the Institute for Molecular Biology of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC) and is being used to analyze proteins involved in metastatic lung cancer, as well as proteins' complexes with antibodies. Cryo-TEM is the second microscope of its kind in Spain and represents a great advance for the user community in this field.
The METCAM microscope, currently being set up, will be used to analyze different types of materials. Its high spatial resolution reaches below 0.5 angstroms, which allows viewing individual atoms. It will be used to tackle challenges such as hydrogen production, CO2 reduction, and the development of quantum materials.
JEMCA's new microscopes are open to the entire scientific community, with academic access free of charge on a competitive basis. Fifty percent of the total cost was financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), with the support of the Ministry for Research and Universities of the Government of Catalonia.
The JEMCA expands research capacities in Catalonia and will also be strengthened by the electron microscope currently being installed at the University of Barcelona, co-funded by the same ERDF program. The JEMCA, through the ICN2, forms part of the European Distributed Research Infrastructure for Advanced Electron Microscopy (e-DREAM).
