Scanning EM in very high electric fields near field ion/emission specimens
An atom probe field ion microscope (APFIM) has been constructed inside a NORAN Instruments Automated Digital Electron Microscope (ADEM). The ADEM is a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a field emission source and a very large vacuum chamber. The APFIM has positive and negative high voltage capability and uses a microchannel-plate/phosphor screen assembly as an imaging and single-ion detector. The APFIM specimen can be cooled by a cryogenic refrigerator. The motivation for this study was the need to deliver an electron beam to the apex of an APFIM specimen while a high field is applied. The beam will be used to thermally pulse the field evaporation rate. The expected field-induced image shift and distortion has been studied previously in a transmission EM with a liquid metal field emission source as a specimen.Fig. 1 shows the interior of the instrument. Computer simulations were done for electron trajectories with negative and positive voltages applied to the emitter based on a simple paraboloidal electric field model described previously.