CuView

CuView is an interactive educational computer application, to teach Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) from the Master¡¯s level upwards. The software is designed for teaching essential aspects of TEM and exploiting/analysing the data along the workflow at increasing complexity, which makes it easy for the beginner to step into the field, but is also particularly suitable for people of advanced and senior level. The software offers a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that guides the learner flawlessly through the steps of defining a sample, obtaining and analysing the TEM images and diffraction patterns. It incorporates educational tools (tips, info text boxes, quizzes) along the simulation workflow.
CuView was built with an innovative strategy in mind for the code assembling: the developed software permits the easy implementation of legacy TEM software tools developed over the last decades without the need to rewrite them. They can thus be made accessible to beginners with minimal knowledge in TEM. CuView is essentially a computer graphical user interface, written in java, that integrates precompiled existing softwares and innovative features aimed at making TEM accessible to the beginner with self-teaching key themes. CuView is available as a website: http://scopem-cuview.ethz.ch:8080.
In addition, the software presents a virtual TEM with the functionalities of a real one, with buttons allowing the change in imaging condition. It relies on a library of images taken on a real microscope together with the corresponding sketches of the optical ray diagram to better explain the functioning of the instrument.
The most innovative part is that the student follows a ¡°workflow¡± as in a guided tour to create TEM images and electron diffraction patterns, without necessarily knowing the complicated mathematics behind the process.