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Summary: This paper describes a proposal to improve the design of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The design is based upon using an SEM column similar to the conventional one, magnetic sector plates and a mixed field immersion objective lens. The optical axis of the SEM column lies in the horizontal direction and the primary beam is turned through 90 degrees before it reaches the specimen. This arrangement allows for the efficient collection, detection and spectral analysis of the scattered electrons on a hemispherical surface that is located well away from the rest of the SEM column. The proposed SEM design can also be easily extended to incorporate time multiplexed columns and multi-column arrays.

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This article presents simulation and experimental results for add-on transmission attachments that have been developed for the scanning electron microscope (SEM). A primary beam energy of around 30 keV is used to irradiate thin test specimens (<100 nm). A transmission lens attachment enables a conventional field emission SEM to improve its image resolution by an order of magnitude, providing an image magnification of several million and a spatial resolution down to 0.3 nm. In addition, a compact energy electron loss spectrometer attachment has been developed that uses the SEM’s built-in secondary electron detector.

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