SPI Backscattered Electron Imaging Performance Standard

For the first time, an image performance sample for BSE imaging!

Spanish

BSE image of colloidal gold cocktain containing 30, 10 and 5 nm gold.

Same field as above but with brighness reversal

Introduction:
While there are available any number of different image performance standards for secondary electron imaging, there has been virtually no image perforance standards for the evaluation of either a) spatial resolution or b) atomic number resolution when operating in the BSE mode. In recent years there has been the appearance on the market of a few standards for measuring atomic number resolution but we believe these not quite up to what the markets needs. We are working on our own and superior z resolution standard.

Does anyone really care about the resolution they get out of their instrument?
We believe they do. First, there are those who are in the market for purchasing a new backscattered electron detector and while there are a number of different vendors producing such detectors, as well as a number of the column instrument manufactures, and for different prices, no one really has had a good sample to check what kind of spatial resolution a particular BSE detectors yields on their particular microscope.

Furthermore with the increasingly larger number of SEM laboratories in commercial firms coming under some kind of ISO regulation and accreditation, there is also an ever increasing need for the appropriate standard sample(s) to document the performance.of their BSE detectors. And when we think of performance, we are thinking not only of "z" resolution but also spatial resolution.

Description for the BSE image performance sample:
The SPI Supplies designed sample is simple to understand and easy to use. We made up a "cocktail" of four different sizes of colloidal gold: 30, 15, 10 and 5 nm by mixing equal volumes of the four different sizes. We then applied some of the "cocktail" onto the window of an SPI Supplies Brand silicon nitride membrane window grid.

Hence it becomes the ideal sample for anyone doing BSE imaging and it could be particularly helpful to anyone doing BSE imaging through a wet cell (for example, live cell imaging). For example, there have been wet cells with polymer membranes and there are now wet cells with silicon nitride and silicon oxide windows. The spatial resolution gets better as the window thickness gets thinner. Polymer membranes are far thicker than the inorganic windows offered by SPI Supplies. But up until now, one could only compare images by eye and this kind of evaluation was generally getting done by way of subjective measurements.

One can then take one of these samples, what we call the BSE Imaging Performance Standard, and use it to actually determine which of the detectors under consideration fall by the way side. We believe that a detector should be purchased on the basis of performance, not on some subjective evaluation of different detectors. And these image performance samples permit a user to essentially look for the detector that will show the 5 nm gold.

Available mounts:
This novel and very useful resolution checker samples is available on three popular SEM mounts or else it can be ordered and the mount of your choice by special order.

Available products:

SPI Backscattered Electron Imaging performance Standard:
	SPI #	Price, Each	In Stock
3/8" (9.5 mm) round mount (SPI# 1501)	1560BSE-AB	$350.00	No
Pin-type mount (SPI# 1506)	1561BSE-AB	350.00	No
1" (25.4 mm) round metallographic size mount (SPI# 1510)	1562BSE-AB	360.50	No
Mount of your choice	1563BSE-AB	463.50	No

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