Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Magnification is how much bigger a sample appears to be under the microscope than it is in real life.
Overall magnification = Objective lens x Eyepiece lens
Resolution is the ability to distinguish between two points on an image i.e. the amount of detail
Electron Microscopy
An electron microscope can magnify 100 to 1000 times more than a visible-light microscope. This uses a beam of electrons, rather than electromagnetic radiation, to "illuminate" the specimen. This may seem strange, but electrons behave like waves and can easily be produced (using a hot wire), focused (using electromagnets) and detected (using a phosphor screen or photographic film). A beam of electrons has an effective wavelength of less than 1 nm. Electrons accelerated by voltages on the order of 10,000 Volts (10 kV) have wavelengths on the order of 0.004 nm. Theoretically this would be the resolution, but in actuality, due to aberrations in the magnetic lenses, the resolution is more like 0.1 to 0.5 nm.
SEM
A beam of electrons is produced at the top of the microscope by an electron gun. The electron beam follows a vertical path through the microscope, which is held within a vacuum.
The beam travels through electromagnetic fields and lenses, which focus the beam down toward the sample. Once the beam hits the sample, electrons and X-rays are ejected from the sample.
Detectors collect these X-rays, backscattered electrons, and secondary electrons and convert them into a signal that is sent to a screen similar to a television screen. This produces the final image.
Electron Microscopy Basics http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/EM_tutorial/ Preparing a Sample for the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/training/esem-prep.mov
Pass a beam of electrons through the specimen. The electrons that pass through the specimen are detected on a fluorescent screen on which the image is displayed.
Thin sections of specimen are needed for transmission electron microscopy as the electrons have to pass through the specimen for the image to be produced. This is the most common form of electron microscope and has the best resolution.
Developed in the 1980s contains a tiny probe, whose tip may be only a few atoms wide. The tip is moved across the sample surface. The tip, as it scans, remains very close to the surface of the specimen, about 1nm above it.
A small voltage is applied between the probe and the surface causes electrons to leave the surface and pass through the vacuum to the probe (tunneling). The tunneling current is very sensitive to the gap width, so a feedback mechanism can be used to raise and lower the probe to maintain a constant electron current.
The probes vertical motion, following the surface of the specimen, is then plotted as a function of position, producing a three dimensional image of the surface. Surface features as fine as the size of an atom can be resolved (0.1nm laterally and 0.01nm vertically. The topographic image of a surface actually represents the distribution of electron charge.
Instead of detecting an electric current, the AFM measures the force between a cantilevered tip and the sample, a force which depends strongly on the tip sample separation at each point.
The tip scans the surface of the sample, just like the STM.
A metal evaporation source (Pt, W, etc) is used to coat the sample surface to protect it under a metal film.
An internal or external micromanipulator is required to extract the slice.
The system contains both a focused Ga+ ion beam and a field emission scanning electron column. The ion column can be used for selective removal of material by ion beam milling. In addition, the ion beam can be used for ion-enhanced imaging of fine texture analysis in crystalline materials. The high resolution field emission electron beam can be used for chemical analysis through either electron dispersive spectroscopy or z-contrast imaging using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) detector, or can be combined with an electron backscatter detector for orientation imaging analysis.
Analytical Techniques
Holography Energy-filtered Imaging Annular Dark Field TEM Imaging Electron Tomography
Core-Loss Spectroscopy
Oxygen K-edges (left) of a silicate particle containing nanopores filled with gaseous matter (right); (from top to bottom) spectrum recorded on a pore, spectrum from the silicate matrix, and the difference spectrum, which shows strong absorption features characteristic for oxygen gas (O2, p* and s* peaks) and weaker ones for water (534 and 536 eV). The spectra were recorded using a ~1-nm diameter monochromated electron probe, with 0.2 eV energy resolution.
Low-Loss Spectroscopy
Room-temperature valence electron energy-loss spectrum of a superconducting Y1Ba2Cu3O7-d sample in [100] direction (red), revealing a band gap of 1.4 eV. A Kramers-Kronig analysis yields the real (green) and the imaginary (blue) part of the dielectric function describing the dispersion and absorption characteristics of the material. The energy resolution is 0.2 eV, the spatial resolution ~1 nm.