A Combined Conventional and Scanning Electron Microscope

Author(s):  
P.S. Ong

In electron optical instrumentation, it would be generally desirable to have a lens with a short focal length. Both spherical and chromatical aberration decreases with focal length and this will result in a better resolution and image brightness. This consideration has been taken into account in the design of conventional electron microscopes, and the focal length of the objective lens of such instrumentation ranges from a few millimeters to a fraction of a millimeter. A short focal length lens requires that the specimen be located in a magnetic field i.e., within the pole piece gap. This results in (a) a limitation in the size of the specimen and (b) a restriction, to use the microscope to nonmagnetic specimens only.

Author(s):  
J. S. Lally ◽  
R. Evans

One of the instrumental factors often limiting the resolution of the electron microscope is image defocussing due to changes in accelerating voltage or objective lens current. This factor is particularly important in high voltage electron microscopes both because of the higher voltages and lens currents required but also because of the inherently longer focal lengths, i.e. 6 mm in contrast to 1.5-2.2 mm for modern short focal length objectives.The usual practice in commercial electron microscopes is to design separately stabilized accelerating voltage and lens supplies. In this case chromatic aberration in the image is caused by the random and independent fluctuations of both the high voltage and objective lens current.


Author(s):  
P. S. Ong ◽  
C. L. Gold

Transmission electron microscopes (TEM) have the capability of producing an electron spot (probe) with a diameter equal to its resolving power. Inclusion of the required scanning system and the appropriate detectors would therefore easily convert such an instrument into a high resolution scanning electron microscope (SEM). Such an instrument becomes increasingly useful in the transmission mode of operation since it allows the use of samples which are considered too thick for conventional TEM. SEM accessories now available are all based on the use of the prefield of the objective lens to focus the beam. The lens is operated either as a symmetrical Ruska lens or its asymmetrical version. In these approaches, the condensor system of the microscope forms part of the reducing optics and the final spot size is usually larger than 20Å.


Author(s):  
A. V. Crewe

A 100 kv transmission scanning microscope is now being constructed which should have a point resolution of 2.5 to 3 Å. The design of this microscope is similar to the design of our existing 30 kv 5 Å microscope, but there are several significant changes which are based upon some difficulties and sources of inflexibility of that microscope.A field emission electron gun of our usual design will be used as the source of electrons, the only difference being that the spacing between the anodes has been increased from 2 to 3 cm. The electron beam will then pass through a condenser lens which will produce a parallel beam of electrons. This parallel beam will then be focused onto the specimen by means of a short focal length lens (approximately 1 mm focal length). The reason for using a condenser lens to produce the parallel beam of electrons is that in the future a quadrupole-octupole correction system will be installed in this section of the microscope in order to attempt to correct the spherical aberrations of the objective lens and thereby improve its resolution.


Author(s):  
T. Otaka ◽  
O. Yamada ◽  
S. Saito ◽  
T. Watanabe

We have developed an automatic focus control and astigmatism correction system for electron microscopes. Fig. 1 shows the Model S-570 SEM.In the scanning electron microscope focusing operation at high magnifications (several thousand times or higher) requires a great deal of skill and experience. The Automatic Focus Control System enables this difficult operation to be done automatically. Fig. 2 shows the principle of the detecting system of focus.The electron beam is converged on a specimen by an objective lens and the signal emitted from the specimen is detected by a detector as an imaging signal. Waveform of the imaging signal is sharp at optimum focus conditions and consequently its differential signal shows a large peak height. On the other hand, when the focus condition is not optimum, the imaging signal is smooth and the differential signal shows small peak height. The Automatic Focus Control is a system in which focus condition is regulated automatically so that peak height of the differential signal becomes maximum.


Author(s):  
Oliver C. Wells ◽  
Françoise K. LeGoues ◽  
Rodney T. Hodgson

For the best resolution in either the scanning electron microscope (SEM) or the transmission electron microscope (TEM) the sample must be mounted in the high-field region of a condenser-objective lens. Detectors for either the secondary electrons (SE) or the backscattered electrons (BSE) in the SEM must allow for the fact that both of these are strongly deflected by the focusing magnetic field of the lens. Typically the SE are collected above the lens, while the BSE are collected using either diode(s) or scintillator(s) between the polepieces.Low-loss electrons (LLE) are scattered from a solid target with an energy loss of less than a few percent of the incident beam energy. These can be collected from a steeply tilted sample from below the exit polepiece of a condenser-objective lens. A suggestion to use the second half of the lens field as an energy filter was shown to by Munro to be unlikely to work because the chromatic dispersion of this part of the lens field is insufficient.The magnetic field of a condenser-objective lens can provide energy filtering as follows.A flat sample is mounted at typically 25° to 30° from the horizontal at or near the center of the lens. Figure 1 shows the trajectories of the electrons scattered with no loss of energy as calculated by Munro. These electrons are confined within a “containment region” with a well-defined boundary beyond which they cannot go. If a suitable detector is placed just inside the surface of this region then it will collect LLE. The slower BSE are confined within a smaller region and so are not collected.


Author(s):  
K. Shibatomi ◽  
T. Yamanoto ◽  
H. Koike

In the observation of a thick specimen by means of a transmission electron microscope, the intensity of electrons passing through the objective lens aperture is greatly reduced. So that the image is almost invisible. In addition to this fact, it have been reported that a chromatic aberration causes the deterioration of the image contrast rather than that of the resolution. The scanning electron microscope is, however, capable of electrically amplifying the signal of the decreasing intensity, and also free from a chromatic aberration so that the deterioration of the image contrast due to the aberration can be prevented. The electrical improvement of the image quality can be carried out by using the fascionating features of the SEM, that is, the amplification of a weak in-put signal forming the image and the descriminating action of the heigh level signal of the background. This paper reports some of the experimental results about the thickness dependence of the observability and quality of the image in the case of the transmission SEM.


Author(s):  
S. Takashima ◽  
H. Hashimoto ◽  
S. Kimoto

The resolution of a conventional transmission electron microscope (TEM) deteriorates as the specimen thickness increases, because chromatic aberration of the objective lens is caused by the energy loss of electrons). In the case of a scanning electron microscope (SEM), chromatic aberration does not exist as the restrictive factor for the resolution of the transmitted electron image, for the SEM has no imageforming lens. It is not sure, however, that the equal resolution to the probe diameter can be obtained in the case of a thick specimen. To study the relation between the specimen thickness and the resolution of the trans-mitted electron image obtained by the SEM, the following experiment was carried out.


Author(s):  
K. Tsuno ◽  
Y. Harada ◽  
T. Sato

Magnetic domains of ferromagnetic amorphous ribbon have been observed using Bitter powder method. However, the domains of amorphous ribbon are very complicated and the surface of ribbon is not flat, so that clear domain image has not been obtained. It has been desired to observe more clear image in order to analyze the domain structure of this zero magnetocrystalline anisotropy material. So, we tried to observe magnetic domains by means of a back-scattered electron mode of high voltage scanning electron microscope (HVSEM).HVSEM method has several advantages compared with the ordinary methods for observing domains: (1) high contrast (0.9, 1.5 and 5% at 50, 100 and 200 kV) (2) high penetration depth of electrons (0.2, 1.5 and 8 μm at 50, 100 and 200 kV). However, image resolution of previous HVSEM was quite low (maximum magnification was less than 100x), because the objective lens cannot be excited for avoiding the application of magnetic field on the specimen.


Author(s):  
William P. Wergin ◽  
Eric F. Erbe ◽  
Terrence W. Reilly

Although the first commercial scanning electron microscope (SEM) was introduced in 1965, the limited resolution and the lack of preparation techniques initially confined biological observations to relatively low magnification images showing anatomical surface features of samples that withstood the artifacts associated with air drying. As the design of instrumentation improved and the techniques for specimen preparation developed, the SEM allowed biologists to gain additional insights not only on the external features of samples but on the internal structure of tissues as well. By 1985, the resolution of the conventional SEM had reached 3 - 5 nm; however most biological samples still required a conductive coating of 20 - 30 nm that prevented investigators from approaching the level of information that was available with various TEM techniques. Recently, a new SEM design combined a condenser-objective lens system with a field emission electron source.


Author(s):  
K. Ogura ◽  
A. Ono ◽  
S. Franchi ◽  
P.G. Merli ◽  
A. Migliori

In the last few years the development of Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM), equipped with a Field Emission Gun (FEG) and using in-lens specimen position, has allowed a significant improvement of the instrumental resolution . This is a result of the fine and bright probe provided by the FEG and by the reduced aberration coefficients of the strongly excited objective lens. The smaller specimen size required by in-lens instruments (about 1 cm, in comparison to 15 or 20 cm of a conventional SEM) doesn’t represent a serious limitation in the evaluation of semiconductor process techniques, where the demand of high resolution is continuosly increasing. In this field one of the more interesting applications, already described (1), is the observation of superlattice structures.In this note we report a comparison between secondary electron (SE) and backscattered electron (BSE) images of a GaAs / AlAs superlattice structure, whose cross section is reported in fig. 1. The structure consist of a 3 nm GaAs layer and 10 pairs of 7 nm GaAs / 15 nm AlAs layers grown on GaAs substrate. Fig. 2, 3 and 4 are SE images of this structure made with a JEOL JSM 890 SEM operating at an accelerating voltage of 3, 15 and 25 kV respectively. Fig. 5 is a 25 kV BSE image of the same specimen. It can be noticed that the 3nm layer is always visible and that the 3 kV SE image, in spite of the poorer resolution, shows the same contrast of the BSE image. In the SE mode, an increase of the accelerating voltage produces a contrast inversion. On the contrary, when observed with BSE, the layers of GaAs are always brighter than the AlAs ones , independently of the beam energy.


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