Although powdered phosphor screens are usually used for scintillators of STEM, it has been found that the phosphor screen of appropriate thickness should be used depending on the accelerating voltage, in order to keep high detective quantum efficiency. 1 It has been also found that the variation in sensitivity, due to granularity of phosphor screens, makes the measurement of fine electron probe difficult and that the sensitivity reduces with electron irradiation specially at high voltages.In order to find out a preferable scintillator for STEM, single crystals of YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet), which are used for detecting secondary and backscattered electrons in SEM were investigated and compared with powdered phosphor screens, at the accelerating voltages of 100kV and 1 MV. A conventional electron detection system, consisting of scintillator, light guide and PMT (Hamamatsu Photonics R268) was used for measurements. Scintillators used are YAG single crystals of 1.0 to 3.2mm thicknesses (with surfaces matted for good interface to the light guide) and of 0.8mm thickness (with polished surface), and powdered P-46 phosphor screens of 0.07mm and 1.0mm thicknesses for 100kV and 1MV, respectively. Surfaces on electron-incidence side of all scintillators are coated with reflecting layers.
