Conclusion and perspectives

Abstract

Through the course of this book, the routine capabilities of state-of-the-art FE-SEMs to provide nanometer resolution was the central theme. Especially, the focus was directed towards the cold-field emission technology that faced a revolution with the introduction of the auto-flash technology. This technology removes the drawbacks of the previous CFE technology and allows a higher brightness and large current density at all time, a small energy spread, and a low beam instabilities due to an improved gun chamber vacuum and stable beam current. All these parameters have an impact on the image quality. The high current density and brightness allow reducing significantly the beam current necessary to obtained SE, BSE, STEM, and x-ray images while keeping the probe current and beam size reasonably low, which helps reducing the specimen charging at the same time.