Open AccessA novel technique for visualizing electron beam induced charging
Author(s) -
Tang Xiaohu,
Joy David C.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
scanning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.359
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1932-8745
pISSN - 0161-0457
DOI - 10.1002/sca.4950260503
Subject(s) - electron , cathode ray , sample (material) , beam (structure) , computer science , simple (philosophy) , measure (data warehouse) , materials science , nanotechnology , optics , engineering physics , physics , data mining , nuclear physics , philosophy , epistemology , thermodynamics
Charging is one of the most important problems encountered in scanning electron microscopy and as a result this phenomenon it has received a lot of both theoretical and experimental attention. Despite this, many questions remain about the nature and behavior of charging because of the limitations of the experimental techniques available to study it. For example, although it is now straightforward to determine in situ the surface potential of a sample that is charging during irradiation, it is difficult to measure the lateral extent of the charging, or its persistence once the incident beam is switched off. We describe here a simple technique which provides a rapid way of visualizing the temporal and spatial behavior of charging phenomena.