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Field of View and Image Distortion : A Review of Low Magnification Imaging In the Environmental and Conventional Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Brendan J. Griffin*
Affiliation:
Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA, Australia6907
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Extract

Most scanning electron microscopy is performed at low magnification; applications utilising the large depth of field nature of the SEM image rather than the high resolution aspect. Some environmental SEMs have a particular limitation in that the field of view is restricted by a pressure limiting aperture (PLA) at the beam entry point of the specimen chamber. With the original ElectroScan design, the E-3 model ESEM utilised a 500 urn aperture which gave a very limited field of view (∼550um diameter at a 10mm working distance [WD]). An increase of aperture size to ∼lmm provided an improved but still unsatisfactory field of view. The simplest option to increase the field of view in an ESEM was noted to be a movement of the pressure and field, limiting aperture back towards the scan coils1. This approach increased the field of view to ∼2mm, at a 10mm WD. A commercial low magnification device extended this concept and indicated the attainment of conventional fields of view.

Type
Environmental SEM
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 1997

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References

1.Griffin, B.J. et al., Microbeam Analysis, 2 (1993)S37-8Google Scholar
2.Wight, S.A. and Taylor, M.E., Proc. Microbeam Analysis-1995 (Etz, E. editor), VCH Publishers, New York, p.391-3.Google Scholar
3. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of ProSciTech (Probing & Structure) in making a Taylor' LMD available for this study.Google Scholar