Achieving 50 nm lateral-resolution quantitative EDX SEM

Abstract

Low Voltage Scanning Electron Microscopy (LV-SEM) has become a very promising approach to perform Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) chemical mapping with high- lateral resolution [1]. Using voltages as low as 1.5keV, sub-10nm resolutions can be achieved. In this work, we try to take advantage of the small interaction volume in order to simplify the otherwise more complex SEM quantitative methodology. This way, phenomena such as absorption and fluorescence can be ignored and, effectively treat the quantification as with the Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)-based Cliff-Lorimer method. Experimental k- factors have been obtained from a series of standards and used to quantify complex oxide phases in steels.