Monte Carlo simulation of the electron beam scattering under gas mixtures environment in an HPSEM at low energy

Mansour, O.; Aidaoui, K.; Kadoun, A.; Khouchaf, L.; Mathieu, C.

doi:10.1016/j.vacuum.2009.09.004

Cited by 21 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…For each phase, twenty simulations is carried out to calculate average of maximum width and maximum depth of interaction volume. 90% of the scattered electrons (low vacuum mode) are considered to calculate the skirt radius and the width of interaction volume [31].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monte Carlo Study of the Interaction Volume Changes by the Beam Skirt in VP-SEM

Azzouzi

Khouchaf

Achahbar³

2017

Acta Phys. Pol. A

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In this work we present a new contribution for tracking the behavior of electron beam in gas and then in material placed in the chamber of a variable pressure scanning electron microscope using Monte Carlo simulation. Firstly our results for width and depth of interaction volume in high vacuum mode are compared and are consistent with those obtained by several relationships present in literature. Carbon and aluminum are considered as examples in order to establish the reliability of our approach and experimental data available from the literature. Then, we compared the evolution of width in both high (Re (HV ) ) and low (Re (LV ) ) vacuum modes with enlargement of skirt (Rs). The present work demonstrates that the best resolution conditions for energy, pressure and material, is given by Rs = Re (HV ) . Finally, the energy that must be used to get the best image resolution for given pressure and material is determined.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monte Carlo Study of the Interaction Volume Changes by the Beam Skirt in VP-SEM

Azzouzi

Khouchaf

Achahbar³

2017

Acta Phys. Pol. A

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“…where R s is the skirt radius, Z the gas atomic number, E the incident beam energy, P the pressure, T the temperature and L corresponds to the gas path length (GPL). Currently the radius of the skirt is used to describe the consequences of the electron beam scattering by the gas on the resolution in imaging and microanalysis [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The Equation 3of R s given above is one of the most used expressions to follow this phenomenon.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So, except for homogeneous materials, R s cannot explain or describe alone what happen. Several works have been performed but the scattering phenomena require a substantial revision [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Surface Skirt in Gaseous Scanning Electron Microscope (GSEM)

Khouchaf

2013

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In this work, a novel parameter called the surface skirt (S s) is introduced. The electron beam scattering by gaseous environment is the fundamental parameter limiting the performance of the Gaseous Scanning Electron Microscopy (GSEM). The result is the enlargement of the primary beam characterized by the radius skirt R s. The scattering phenomena require a much closer re-examination. In fact, depending on the localization of EDX detector and the particles shape to analyze, the collected signal after the beam skirt will be different and R s also will be different. So, except for homogeneous materials, R s can not describe the scattering behavior. In this study, the surface skirt S s instead of the radius skirt is introduced. Unlike R s , the results show that S s is a linear function versus pressure. This may help to use S s in different scattering regimes and for a best interpretation of the consequences of electron scattering beam by gaseous environment. For demonstration, two gas environments: helium and water vapor are given but the results are valid whatever the environment used.

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“…This was shown to affect not only the LEO instrument used in this work, but also the FEI instruments operating in the "low vacuum" mode with the use of a "large field" detector (Rattenberger et al, 2009). For the calculation of electron beam transmission and electron skirt widths (Mansour et al, 2010), we need to know the correct stagnation gas thickness in each case for each instrument, in order to obtain correct results. This clearly means that several attempts and analyses done for some experimental situations in relation to skirt effects are likely to be in error and need to be re-considered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nitrogen gas was chosen only as a testing case to compare the results with previous ones also using nitrogen gas. In practice, other gases can be used like water vapor for imaging biological specimens or helium and other gaseous mixtures for microanalytical work (Mansour et al, 2010).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%