Usage and Training Fees

FACILITY USAGE FEES

EMF facility fees are based on the operating costs of each individual tool. While we try to keep costs competitive and affordable, we seek your understanding on our need to finance the maintenance of our microscopes and facility.

General notes:

The tables below show the regular hourly charges for internal (NUS & NTU) and external users.
For groups with expected heavy facility usage, EMF offers either a subscription or collaboration scheme, subject to the discretion of the PIs involved. Details are provided in their respective sections below.
Charges below are in Singapore dollars (SGD) and do not include Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Office hours refer to 9am - 6pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public holidays.
Users/PIs will be invoiced quarterly.
Charges will still apply if users cancel their booking within 24 hours or fail to turn up for their booked session. Please cancel sessions early and be considerate to the other users of the facility.

Priority for training/service requests:

As EMF operations rely on the research personnel from the respective PI’s groups, we ask for your patience regarding delays in your requests. EMF reserves the right to prioritize requests based on various factors including:

Frequency of equipment usage
Overall feasibility of measurement
Availability of prior characterization results
Timeline of projects (eg. those nearing publications will be prioritized)
Novelty of research (eg. scientific projects will be prioritized over routine screening)
Alignment with EMF’s expertise (eg. biological sample requests will be referred to our sister facility CBIS)

FIB TFS Versa 3D / Helios 450S

Instrument	Internal (self operation)	Internal (usage with assistance) (training)	External (usage with assistance) (training)	Contact person
TFS Helios 450S (hourly charges)	$80	$150	$450	Tjiu Weng Weei (ww.tjiu@nus.edu.sg)
TFS 3D Versa (hourly charges)	$80	$150	$450	Tjiu Weng Weei (ww.tjiu@nus.edu.sg)

Notes:

For service of lamella preparation, estimated session time: 4 hours.
Expected number and duration of training sessions depends on the skills to be learned, as well as the learning pace of the user.
Advanced usage (after office hours, weekends and public holidays) is only available to users that have undergone advanced assessment.

S/TEM JEOL JEM-2800

Instrument	Internal (self operation)	Internal (usage with assistance) (training)	External (usage with assistance) (training)	NUS MSE	Contact person
JEOL JEM-2800 (hourly charges)	$150	$300	$500	$70	Yang Fengzhen (mseyf@nus.edu.sg)

Notes:

Expected number and duration of training sessions depends on the skills to be learned, as well as the learning pace of the user.
Advanced usage (after office hours, weekends and public holidays) is only available to users that have undergone advanced assessment.

S/TEM JEOL JEM-ARM200F

Instrument	Internal (self operation)		Internal (usage with assistance) (training)	External (usage with assistance) (training)	Contact person
JEOL JEM-ARM200F (hourly charges)	Office-hours	Non-office-hours	$300	$600	Chung Jing Yang (jy.chung@nus.edu.sg)
	$150	$100

Notes:

For independent access, users will first need to undergo basic training with the JEM-2800 prior to the ARM200F training.
Advanced usage (after office hours, weekends and public holidays) is only available to users that have undergone advanced assessment.

APT CAMECA Invizo 6000

Instrument	Internal (self operation)	Internal (usage with assistance)	External (usage with assistance)	Remarks
CAMECA Invizo 6000 (hourly charges)	Please contact Prof. Tan Xipeng (xptan@nus.edu.sg) for more information.*	$150/hr – first 4 hrs $100/hr – per additional hr	$300/hour – first 4 hrs $200/hour – per additional hr	*For independent usage, we require users to be under the ‘subscription scheme’ at the moment.
CAMECA Invizo 6000 (hourly charges)		$120/specimen (consumables cost)
APT service per sample (fixed charge)	N/A	$4000/sample	$8000/sample	We will guarantee data that is relevant to the research objective. Inclusive of: Sample preparation (FIB or EP), consumables & data analysis

Notes:

Charges for the Invizo are meant to balance demand, instrument maintenance, and research output.
The above trial charges will be subjected to our internal review after 2 billing cycles (half a year).

SUBSCRIPTION SCHEME

We are open to annual capped charges for groups with expected heavy facility usage. As this implies that your group also has a stake in our microscope/facility, in return, we may require the group’s superuser(s) to assist with EMF operations, including training and services. If you are open to helping us staff EMF in return for capped charges, please contact the following PIs for further discussion:

FIB TFS Versa 3D / Helios 450S

S/TEM JEOL JEM-ARM200F

APT CAMECA Invizo 6000

COLLABORATION SCHEME

Many of our facilities have steep learning curves for independent access (eg. APT data collection and reconstruction, atomic-resolution STEM, sample preparation through FIBs). PIs should request for training only if they plan for their staff/student to specialize in these techniques.

An alternative, cost-effective approach is to seek collaborations and tap into the expertise of our PIs. For collaboration schemes, it will be up to the PI to decide on the cost allocations, authorship rights, and project timelines. Please contact the following PIs to discuss the possibility of collaborations.

S/TEM & FIB:

Prof. Silvija Gradečak (✉ gradecak@nus.edu.sg)

Prof. Michel Bosman (✉ michel.bosman@nus.edu.sg)

Prof. He Qian (✉ heqian@nus.edu.sg)

APT:

Prof. Tan Xipeng (✉ xptan@nus.edu.sg)