A Field Emission Gun (FEG) on a TEM/STEM instrument provides a major improvement in performance relative to one equipped with a LaB6 emitter. The improvement is particularly notable for small-probe techniques: EDX and EELS microanalysis, convergent beam diffraction and scanning. The high brightness of the FEG (108 to 109 A/cm2srad), compared with that of LaB6 (∼106), makes it possible to achieve high probe currents (∼1 nA) in probes of about 1 nm, whilst the currents for similar probes with LaB6 are about 100 to 500x lower. Accordingly the small, high-intensity FEG probes make it possible, e.g., to analyse precipitates and monolayer amounts of segregation on grain boundaries in metals or ceramics (Fig. 1); obtain high-quality convergent beam patterns from heavily dislocated materials; reliably detect 1 nm immuno-gold labels in biological specimens; and perform EDX mapping at nm-scale resolution even in difficult specimens like biological tissue.The high brightness and small energy spread of the FEG also bring an advantage in high-resolution imaging by significantly improving both spatial and temporal coherence.
Facilely prepared aggregation-induced emission (AIE) nanocrystals with deep-red emission for super-resolution imaging
