This book was developed with the goal of providing an easily understood text for those users of the scanning electron microscope (SEM) who have little or no background in the area. The SEM is routinely used to study the surface structure and chemistry of a wide range of biological and synthetic materials at the micrometer to nanometer scale. Ease-of-use, typically facile sample preparation, and straightforward image interpretation, combined with high resolution, high depth of field, and the ability to undertake microchemical and crystallographic analysis, has made scanning electron microscopy one of the most powerful and versatile techniques for characterization today. Indeed, the SEM is a vital tool for the characterization of nanostructured materials and the development of nanotechnology. However, its wide use by professionals with diverse technical backgrounds—including life science, materials science, engineering, forensics, mineralogy, etc., and in various sectors of government, industry, and academia—emphasizes the need for an introductory text providing the basics of effective SEM imaging.A Beginners’ Guide to Scanning Electron Microscopy explains instrumentation, operation, image interpretation and sample preparation in a wide ranging yet succinct and practical text, treating the essential theory of specimen-beam interaction and image formation in a manner that can be effortlessly comprehended by the novice SEM user. This book provides a concise and accessible introduction to the essentials of SEM includes a large number of illustrations specifically chosen to aid readers' understanding of key concepts highlights recent advances in instrumentation, imaging and sample preparation techniques offers examples drawn from a variety of applications that appeal to professionals from diverse backgrounds.

Scanning Electron Microscopy provides a description of the physics of electron-probe formation and of electron-specimen interactions. The different imaging and analytical modes using secondary and backscattered electrons, electron-beam-induced currents, X-ray and Auger electrons, electron channelling effects, and cathodoluminescence are discussed to evaluate specific contrasts and to obtain quantitative information.

This book has evolved by processes of selection and expansion from its predecessor, Practical Scanning Electron Microscopy (PSEM), published by Plenum Press in 1975. The interaction of the authors with students at the Short Course on Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-Ray Microanalysis held annually at Lehigh University has helped greatly in developing this textbook. The material has been chosen to provide a student with a general introduction to the techniques of scanning electron microscopy and x-ray microanalysis suitable for application in such fields as biology, geology, solid state physics, and materials science. Following the format of PSEM, this book gives the student a basic knowledge of (1) the user-controlled functions of the electron optics of the scanning electron microscope and electron microprobe, (2) the characteristics of electron-beam-sample inter actions, (3) image formation and interpretation, (4) x-ray spectrometry, and (5) quantitative x-ray microanalysis. Each of these topics has been updated and in most cases expanded over the material presented in PSEM in order to give the reader sufficient coverage to understand these topics and apply the information in the laboratory. Throughout the text, we have attempted to emphasize practical aspects of the techniques, describing those instru ment parameters which the microscopist can and must manipulate to obtain optimum information from the specimen. Certain areas in particular have been expanded in response to their increasing importance in the SEM field. Thus energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometry, which has undergone a tremendous surge in growth, is treated in substantial detail.

In the spring of 1963, a well-known research institute made a market survey to assess how many scanning electron microscopes might be sold in the United States. They predicted that three to five might be sold in the first year a commercial SEM was available, and that ten instruments would saturate the marketplace. In 1964, the Cambridge Instruments Stereoscan was introduced into the United States and, in the following decade, over 1200 scanning electron microscopes were sold in the U. S. alone, representing an investment conservatively estimated at $50,000- $100,000 each. Why were the market surveyers wrongil Perhaps because they asked the wrong persons, such as electron microscopists who were using the highly developed transmission electron microscopes of the day, with resolutions from 5-10 A. These scientists could see little application for a microscope that was useful for looking at surfaces with a resolution of only (then) about 200 A. Since that time, many scientists have learned to appreciate that information content in an image may be of more importance than resolution per se. The SEM, with its large depth of field and easily that often require little or no sample prepara interpreted images of samples tion for viewing, is capable of providing significant information about rough samples at magnifications ranging from 50 X to 100,000 X. This range overlaps considerably with the light microscope at the low end, and with the electron microscope at the high end.

Scanning transmission electron microscopy has become a mainstream technique for imaging and analysis at atomic resolution and sensitivity, and the authors of this book are widely credited with bringing the field to its present popularity. Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy(STEM): Imaging and Analysis will provide a comprehensive explanation of the theory and practice of STEM from introductory to advanced levels, covering the instrument, image formation and scattering theory, and definition and measurement of resolution for both imaging and analysis. The authors will present examples of the use of combined imaging and spectroscopy for solving materials problems in a variety of fields, including condensed matter physics, materials science, catalysis, biology, and nanoscience. Therefore this will be a comprehensive reference for those working in applied fields wishing to use the technique, for graduate students learning microscopy for the first time, and for specialists in other fields of microscopy.

Scanning and stationary-beam electron microscopes are indispensable tools for both research and routine evaluation in materials science, the semiconductor industry, nanotechnology and the biological, forensic, and medical sciences. This book introduces current theory and practice of electron microscopy, primarily for undergraduates who need to understand how the principles of physics apply in an area of technology that has contributed greatly to our understanding of life processes and "inner space." Physical Principles of Electron Microscopy will appeal to technologists who use electron microscopes and to graduate students, university teachers and researchers who need a concise reference on the basic principles of microscopy.

A guide to modern scanning electron microscopy instrumentation, methodology and techniques, highlighting novel applications to cell and molecular biology.