Re: [sudo-discuss] SEM microscope

Environmental vibration and EMI will limit the ability of whatever scanning electron, confocal or scanning tunneling system you put in the building. Look for the environmental vibration specs of the equipment you want to consider. For example: http://fbodaily.com/archive/2004/09-September/02-Sep-2004/FBO-00661968.htm It's a bit of an ugly format but a bit down the page is a list of frequency and magnitude limits under which the JEOL 6400 system operates to spec and defines proper vibration isolation. The high magnification systems may not be able to have sufficient vibration isolation without a very expensive facilities upgrade depending on the floor underpinnings. Trains, motor vehicles on nearby roads and possibly even people walking in the building can transmit vibration that limits the ultimate resolution. Likewise, clean power is essential. Power line conditioning that removes unspec'd frequencies is required or you will never get the system stable enough to hold focus to image or analyze. At least in the past, JEOL was not that good at making their system fit into less than stellar laboratory conditions. Likewise, you will want to be careful about through-the-air electromagnetic interference from things like power lines, etc. The 60Hz frequency from power lines throws a magnetic field through the air that will generate a beat pattern in the images. This will limit the minimum accelerating voltage you can use without interference. Next to the Tesla coil? A Tesla coil creates a magnetic field which will be transmitted through the air to interfere with the electron beam of the SEM. Other things that throw off magnetic fields like transformers, anything that spins or vibrates deliberately like vortexer, centrifuge, orbiters, etc. will throw off magnetic fields, too. Environmental and power considerations are going to make or break the ability of CCL to effectively use the JEOL SEM in the lab. I suppose you might wonder why I would know about SEMs and environmental considerations. One of the areas I worked in at Intel was the replacement of optical critical dimension measurement with SEM critical dimension measurement inside a semiconductor manufacturing facility. We implemented JEOL, Nanometrics and ultimately Hitachi SEM systems. JEOL and Nanometrics were very sensitive to the environment we placed the systems. Hitachi much less so. If you can come across a Hitachi SEM you _might_ be able to make it work in the CCL environment. JEOL SEMs can be very good systems placed in a good clean, vibration isolated location. It will be very difficult (maybe impossible) to get sufficiently useful images or beam control for analytical reasons without such conditions. Cindy On Monday, December 22, 2014 7:05:22 PM UTC-8, patrikd wrote: