An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. They use electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing them to produce magnified images or electron diffraction patterns. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times smaller than that of visible light, electron microscopes have a much higher resolution of about 0.1 nm, which compares to about 200 nm for light microscopes. Electron microscope may refer to:
A microscope is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisible to the eye unless aided by a microscope.
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that contain information about the surface topography and composition of the sample. The electron beam is scanned in a raster scan pattern, and the position of the beam is combined with the intensity of the detected signal to produce an image. In the most common SEM mode, secondary electrons emitted by atoms excited by the electron beam are detected using a secondary electron detector. The number of secondary electrons that can be detected, and thus the signal intensity, depends, among other things, on specimen topography. Some SEMs can achieve resolutions better than 1 nanometer.
A cathodoluminescence (CL) microscope combines methods from electron and regular microscopes. It is designed to study the luminescence characteristics of polished thin sections of solids irradiated by an electron beam.
A microprobe is an instrument that applies a stable and well-focused beam of charged particles to a sample.
An ion beam is a type of charged particle beam consisting of ions. Ion beams have many uses in electronics manufacturing and other industries. A variety of ion beam sources exists, some derived from the mercury vapor thrusters developed by NASA in the 1960s. The most common ion beams are of singly-charged ions.
Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, is a British electrical engineer.
TESLA a.s. is a Czech manufacturer and supplier of special radio communication and security electrical engineering for military and commercial use. The name was originally used by a state-owned conglomerate that was the monopoly producer of electronic appliances and components in the former Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia. The conglomerate was founded in 1946 and ran until 1991, when it was privatised. The Tesla name is used by its successor company and former subsidiaries in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Etec Systems was an American producer of scanning electron microscopes, electron beam lithography tools, and laser beam lithography tools from 1970 until 2005. It was located in Hayward, California, and Hillsboro, Oregon.
The Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, England was founded in the 1950s as the Department of Metallurgy, by William Hume-Rothery, who was a reader in Oxford's Department of Inorganic Chemistry. It is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division
Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability. According to Bloch and Geitner, ”machinery failures reveal a reaction chain of cause and effect… usually a deficiency commonly referred to as the symptom…”. Failure analysis can save money, lives, and resources if done correctly and acted upon. It is an important discipline in many branches of manufacturing industry, such as the electronics industry, where it is a vital tool used in the development of new products and for the improvement of existing products. The failure analysis process relies on collecting failed components for subsequent examination of the cause or causes of failure using a wide array of methods, especially microscopy and spectroscopy. Nondestructive testing (NDT) methods are valuable because the failed products are unaffected by analysis, so inspection sometimes starts using these methods.
Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. A FIB setup is a scientific instrument that resembles a scanning electron microscope (SEM). However, while the SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to image the sample in the chamber, a FIB setup uses a focused beam of ions instead. FIB can also be incorporated in a system with both electron and ion beam columns, allowing the same feature to be investigated using either of the beams. FIB should not be confused with using a beam of focused ions for direct write lithography. These are generally quite different systems where the material is modified by other mechanisms.
A scanning helium ion microscope is an imaging technology based on a scanning helium ion beam. Similar to other focused ion beam techniques, it allows to combine milling and cutting of samples with their observation at sub-nanometer resolution.
Electron-beam-induced deposition (EBID) is a process of decomposing gaseous molecules by an electron beam leading to deposition of non-volatile fragments onto a nearby substrate. The electron beam is usually provided by a scanning electron microscope, which results in high spatial accuracy and the possibility to produce free-standing, three-dimensional structures.
The environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) is a scanning electron microscope (SEM) that allows for the option of collecting electron micrographs of specimens that are wet, uncoated, or both by allowing for a gaseous environment in the specimen chamber. Although there were earlier successes at viewing wet specimens in internal chambers in modified SEMs, the ESEM with its specialized electron detectors and its differential pumping systems, to allow for the transfer of the electron beam from the high vacuum in the gun area to the high pressure attainable in its specimen chamber, make it a complete and unique instrument designed for the purpose of imaging specimens in their natural state. The instrument was designed originally by Gerasimos Danilatos while working at the University of New South Wales.
FEI Company is an American company that designs, manufactures, and supports microscope technology. Headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon, FEI has over 2,800 employees and sales and service operations in more than 50 countries around the world. Formerly listed on the NASDAQ, it is a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Jonathan Harris Orloff is an American physicist, author and professor. Born in New York City, he is the eldest son of Monford Orloff and brother of pianist Carole Orloff and historian Chester Orloff. Orloff is known for his major fields of research in charged particle optics, applications of field emission processes, high-brightness electron and ion sources, focused ion and electron beams and their applications for micromachining, surface analysis and microscopy and instrumentation development for semiconductor device manufacturing.
Mountains is an image analysis and surface metrology software platform published by the company Digital Surf. Its core is micro-topography, the science of studying surface texture and form in 3D at the microscopic scale. The software is dedicated to profilometers, 3D light microscopes ("MountainsMap"), scanning electron microscopes ("MountainsSEM") and scanning probe microscopes ("MountainsSPIP").
Soquelec limited is a Montreal-based company that focuses on sales and service of scientific equipment for applications in materials and life sciences. It is the Canadian distributor of manufacturers of digital imaging technology and accessories, such as Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, X-Ray scanning and sample preparation. It is also a provider of laboratory consumables. Its sister company, Soquelec Telecommunications, specializes in the distribution of RF, microwave and millimeter-wave telecommunication components.
The Austrian Centre for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis is a cooperation between the Institute of Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis (FELMI) of the Graz University of Technology (TUG) and the Graz Centre of Electron Microscopy (ZFE), which is a member of Austrian Cooperative Research (ACR) and run by the non-profit association for the promotion of electron microscopy. It is located at the “Neue Technik Steyrergasse” campus in Graz.
