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Improvement of Depth Resolution of ADF-SCEM by Deconvolution: Effects of Electron Energy Loss and Chromatic Aberration on Depth Resolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

Xiaobin Zhang ,
Masaki Takeguchi ,
Ayako Hashimoto ,
Kazutaka Mitsuishi ,
Meguru Tezuka  and
Masayuki Shimojo
Xiaobin Zhang*
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan Transmission Electron Microscopy Station, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Electron Microscopy Group, Surface Physics and Structure Unit, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan
Masaki Takeguchi
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan Transmission Electron Microscopy Station, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Electron Microscopy Group, Surface Physics and Structure Unit, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan
Ayako Hashimoto
Affiliation:
Transmission Electron Microscopy Station, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Electron Microscopy Group, Surface Physics and Structure Unit, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Global Research Center for Environment and Energy Based on Nanomaterials Science, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan
Kazutaka Mitsuishi
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan Transmission Electron Microscopy Station, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Electron Microscopy Group, Surface Physics and Structure Unit, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Global Research Center for Environment and Energy Based on Nanomaterials Science, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan
Meguru Tezuka
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Saitama Institute of Technology, 1690 Fusaiji, Fukaya, Saitama 369-0293, Japan
Masayuki Shimojo
Affiliation:
Global Research Center for Environment and Energy Based on Nanomaterials Science, National Institute for Materials Science, 3-13 Sakura, Tsukuba 305-0003, Japan Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology, 3-7-5 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-8548, Japan
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: ZHANG.Xiabin@nims.go.jp
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Abstract

Scanning confocal electron microscopy (SCEM) is a new imaging technique that is capable of depth sectioning with nanometer-scale depth resolution. However, the depth resolution in the optical axis direction (Z) is worse than might be expected on the basis of the vertical electron probe size calculated with the existence of spherical aberration. To investigate the origin of the degradation, the effects of electron energy loss and chromatic aberration on the depth resolution of annular dark-field SCEM were studied through both experiments and computational simulations. The simulation results obtained by taking these two factors into consideration coincided well with those obtained by experiments, which proved that electron energy loss and chromatic aberration cause blurs at the overfocus sides of the Z-direction intensity profiles rather than degrade the depth resolution much. In addition, a deconvolution method using a simulated point spread function, which combined two Gaussian functions, was adopted to process the XZ-slice images obtained both from experiments and simulations. As a result, the blurs induced by energy loss and chromatic aberration were successfully removed, and there was also about 30% improvement in the depth resolution in deconvoluting the experimental XZ-slice image.

Keywords

ADF-SCEM3D imagingdepth resolutionpinholeelectron energy losschromatic aberrationcomputational simulationdeconvolution
Type
Techniques Development
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , June 2012 , pp. 603 - 611
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2012

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