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Plasma Cleaning for Electron Microscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Thomas C. Isabell  and
Paul E. Fischione
Thomas C. Isabell
Affiliation:
E.A. Fischione Instruments, Inc., Export, PA15632
Paul E. Fischione
Affiliation:
E.A. Fischione Instruments, Inc., Export, PA15632
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Extract

Specimen contamination and amorphous irradiation damage severely limit the ability to perform accurate electron microscope analysis of materials, especially as specimen areas of interest decrease in size. To analyze smaller areas of interest, electron probe sizes have decreased, while probe currents have increased. The combination of these two factors results in an increase in the amount of carbonaceous contamination formed on the specimen under the electron beam. Recently, the use of low energy plasmas has been shown to be effective in preventing such contamination from occurring (1-3). For TEM, the simultaneous placement of the specimen holder and specimen into such a plasma for short periods of time (usually less than two minutes) results in the ability to hold a converged probe on the specimen for analysis without contamination becoming an problem. Figure 1 is a TEM micrograph of a 304 stainless steel specimen.

Type
Specimen Preparation
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 4 , Issue S2: Proceedings: Microscopy & Microanalysis '98, Microscopy Society of America 56th Annual Meeting, Microbeam Analysis Society 32nd Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia July 12-16, 1998 , July 1998 , pp. 872 - 873
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America

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References

1. Thomas, R.S., Proc. 7th Annual Scanning Electron Microscope Symposium, Scanning Electron Microscopy (1974) 84.Google Scholar

2. Zaluzec, N.J., U.S. Patent Number 5,510,624, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago (1996).Google Scholar

3. Zandbergen, H.W., Delsing, A.C.A., Traeholt, C., Van Veen, A., and J. deRoode, Proc. XIII International Congress for Electron Microscopy 1(1994) 1003.Google Scholar