I-1 Development in electron optical elements (guns, lens monochromator, filter, detector)

Instrumentation and Techniques

In recent years, there have been many major advances in instrumentation for electron microscopy and analysis. These advances have occurred across a wide front with substantially improved performance of both individual optical elements and complete systems. Improved sources and lower energy spreads are now available with benefits for spatial resolution and analysis. Advances in pulsed sources have given much improved resolution in the time domain. Aberration correction, both geometric and chromatic, has played a key role in increasing resolution while at the same time forcing overall improvement in column performance and stability. Aberration correction is allowing more space around the specimen providing benefits for in-situ experimentation and use of controlled atmospheres. With aberration correction, high resolution is available at sub-100keV with major reductions in knock-on damage. When applied to spectrometers and filters, aberration correction is giving larger acceptance angles and field of view. Progress has also been made in very low energy operation e.g. in the LEEM field. Given that damage is often the limiting factor, improvements in detection efficiency and detector performance are equally important as is the orchestration of signal acquisition to extract the maximum information per incident electron. There have been significant advances in both x-ray and electron spectroscopy as well as other detector systems. Underlying these developments have been advances in design tools. Thus contributions demonstrating new and exciting advances in instrumentation are welcome.

Chairpersons:

Invited Speakers:
- Mathieu Kociack, Universite Paris-Sud, Orsay, France
- Niklas Dellby, NION, Seattle, USA