
For its first edition, the Castaing Prize, Grand Prize of Sf?, was awarded to Marcel Tencé for his pioneering developments in instrumentation in electron microscopy, and in particular in spectral imaging and EELS detection.
Marcel Tencé is a research engineer in the STEM group of the LPS, where he was recruited in 1981 to develop a digital scanning electronics for the LPS VG microscope. Since then, Marcel Tencé has been constantly pushing the performances of scanning electronics towards unique performances. He was also very interested in the optimization of the energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) experiments, and it is quite natural that he was able to implement one of the very first spectral imaging systems. The performances of his inventions have enabled many scientific firsts, ranging from the first detection of single atoms by EELS to nanometric mapping of plasmons first by EELS and then in combination with cathodoluminescence. His inventions have spread throughout the world, be it through numerous academic or industrial collaborations, via for example Orsay Physics that he co-founded or the company Attolight that uses his scanning system. Read more »