09/21/2026
MTRAC Impact: Where Are They Now?
From university research to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that's the kind of progress Michigan's MTRAC program is designed to help make possible. University of Michigan’s researcher, Dr. Robert Hovden, recently completed his 2025 MTRAC Advanced Materials project, “Achieving Liquid Helium TEM for Atomic Imaging for Next Generation Electronics.”
The technology addresses a difficult challenge in transmission electron microscopy: cooling materials to ultralow temperatures while maintaining the extraordinary stability required to image individual atoms. Since the project began, the technology has achieved some impressive milestones; Research demonstrating ultracold, atomic-resolution TEM was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequent work demonstrated sub-angstrom atomic imaging at temperatures around 20 kelvin.
University of Michigan startup h-Bar Instruments is commercializing the technology. An h-Bar system has been successfully installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, bringing the technology into a leading national research facility. h-Bar received a $1.25 million NSF SBIR Phase II award to continue advancing and commercializing its liquid-helium TEM technology, following earlier Phase I funding.
Congratulations to Dr. Hovden and your start-up, h-Bar Instruments team on their continued progress! This is what technology translation looks like.
Supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), Michigan's MTRAC program helps university researchers bridge the gap between promising discoveries and real-world applications.
