EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Besides being the first commercial platform with corrector(s), first generation Titan was capable of high tension range from 300 kV down to 80 kV. Thanks to bifilar coil design, swift mode switches at a certain high tension operation was achieved. Since then, market expectations have moved forward and current S/TEMs can go down to 30 kV with stability achieved over a couple of hours. This timescale can be seen long in some cases, for instance for multi-disciplinary institutes.

Research community has also driven the market in terms of x-ray collection efficiency and output count rate maximization in elemental studies. Si(Li) EDS detectors were replaced with SDDs and Super-X became the first EDS detection system with multiple SDDs on a S/TEM. Growing beam sensitive materials research particularly has brought solid angles to around 2 sr and output count rates to 1 million cps.

Recent advances in R&D allow us to introduce a new platform within the Spectra portfolio, addressing the above mentioned demands in full. This new member, Spectra Ultra S/TEM, is equipped with an EDS detection system allowing unshadowed solid angle of above 4 sr without any compromise in spatial resolution (i.e. larger pole piece). Moreover, Spectra Ultra can stabilize within minutes after a high tension switch, whereby introducing the term “probe high tension” to the TEM community. In this way, one can now use high tension as an experiment variable similar to changing probe current or convergence angle in microscope operation.

We believe that Spectra Ultra S/TEM will further accelerate research in beam sensitive materials. Thanks to the unprecedented x-ray collection efficiency, extreme low doses can now be used to generate high quality elemental maps. Furthermore, depending on the specimen behavior under the electron beam, probe high tension can be tuned as often as needed for experiment optimization.