Mochii is a miniature

scanning electron microscope A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that ...

made by

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

-based startup company Voxa. The Mochii has the same capabilities as a conventional SEM, such as usage in

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

for research purposes,

microchip An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

and

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

quality control, and medicine. Mochii users are able to operate the microscope using an

IOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

app.

History

Development of what ended up being the Mochii began in 2012. The goal of the Mochii was to take scanning electron microscopes, conventionally large, expensive, and unwieldy tools, and shrink them down in order to decrease cost and increase portability. In 2015, Voxa began collaborating with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

who saw the potential of taking the Mochii to space. In the last few years, NASA has provided upwards of $450,000 for the development of the Mochii. The Mochii had to confront issues unique to space-based operation such as "errant fluid behavior, residual gravity gradients, cosmic rays, and safety of flight". In 2018, the Mochii won the Microscopy Today Innovation Award, an industry award given for inventions that make microscopy more efficient and powerful. In June 2019, the Mochii participated in the 23rd NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) mission. On February 15, 2020, the Mochii launched on the Cygnus

cargo spacecraft Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which the ...

, headed to the ISS. Voxa's microscope is supposed to help with on-site imaging at the ISS, this eliminates the need for sending the sample back down to Earth which has the issues of cost, time, and potential sample damage.

Specifications

The Mochii measures and weighs around 6 pounds. The SEM's stage measures . The Mochii has a swap-able

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

cartridge that eliminates the need for in-person servicing. The cartridge has a source potential of 10 kV, a 5000x

magnification Magnification is the process of enlarging the apparent size, not physical size, of something. This enlargement is quantified by a size ratio called optical magnification. When this number is less than one, it refers to a reduction in size, so ...

, a

backscatter In physics, backscatter (or backscattering) is the reflection of waves, particles, or signals back to the direction from which they came. It is usually a diffuse reflection due to scattering, as opposed to specular reflection as from a mirror, ...

array

detector A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...

, and auto-calibration. The microscope is capable of EDS, a technique which analyzes the energy spectrum of a sample in order to find out the abundance of certain elements. The Mochii comes outfitted with an app that runs on

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

devices that run

8 or higher.

References

{{Reflist Scientific equipment Microscopes Scanning probe microscopy