The 32nd European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM), held from 18th to 23rd of August 2019 in Vienna, again attracted over 1'000 visitiors, thus confirming its status as Europe’s biggest gathering of the crystallographic community. The startup company ELDICO Scientific AG, founded in 2019 and based in the Switzerland Innovation Park INNOVAARE next to the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, showcased their innovative hardware concept for electron diffraction instrumentation.
ECM32: Good start for ELDICO Scientific
The ELDICO scientific team presenting its newly designed, innovative electron diffractometer for R&D and quality control: (from left) Dr. Gunther Steinfeld (CTO), Dr. Eric Hovestreydt (CSO) and Nils Gebhardt (CFO)
After five days of intensive discussion at their booth the ELDICO team leaves full of confidence from the ECM32. “My first ECM was over 30 years ago in Vienna as well and since then ECM was always a meeting where big things have been revealed. But this time has been particularly interesting because I believe we witnessed a new technology evolving: electron diffraction. I believe Mauro Gemmi et al. are right when they call this a revolution, and ELDICO is at the forefront of this movement”, says Eric Hovestreydt, Chief Sales Officer at ELDICO Scientific.
Measuring the unmeasurable
ELDICO develops, produces and sells electron diffractometers for the analysis of solid compounds enabling industrial and scientific researchers to characterise hitherto unmeasurable nano-crystalline systems. So far conventional methods (X-ray) fail, because they require bigger crystal sizes, which are often difficult or even impossible to produce.
With support of the Nano Argovia Programme and the Swiss Nanoscience Insitute (SNI), the proof-of-concept was achieved in 2018 together with ETH Zürich and the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) Basel, on scientifically and industrially relevant samples. The results were published in 2018 and awarded Top 5 «Breakthrough of the Year 2018» from the leading scientific magazine SCIENCE.
