Specimen Damage in EPMA/SEM

Abstract

Specimen damage due to electron beam irradiation is a serious problem for EPMASEM observation, which is caused by heat produced in the process of inelastic scattering of incident electrons. The produced heat is in proportion to the speci-men current and accelerating voltage and is in inverse proportion to the beam diameter. The thin film method using this substrates for the soft materials is effective to avoid the electron beam damage. Several effective methods to suppress the specimen damage are presented and discussed by using real examples. 34