I want to carry on a in-situ experiment in high temperature (about 200℃) by SEM. I want to know whether there will be a severe influence of resolution caused by such a temperature. Dose anyone have some information about the relationship between SEM imaging quality and temperature?
addition:
Thanks for answering my question. I want to use Secondary Electron to observe material microstructure changes in grain boundary (which is relatively slow, and I'm planning to take ONE photo each 15mins to calculate local strain by DIC). And I'm worrying about whether the thermal drift(??) will affects my measurement.
If you heat your sample stage and the sample is several mm away from the pole piece, then in high vacuum the latter should not warm up and so your electron optical resolution will remain the same, however, thermal drift of the specimen stage will distort your images (the stronger, the slower your scan rate is), which you can monitor by tracking the position of a certain image feaster in successive images. You can then assume that, to a first order, the image draft rate is constant, and if your feature moves x nm/sec, then you can work out what frame rate to use in order to image features of a given size. You can also undistort your image if you either assume a constant draft rate or you measure the distortion of some feature whose geometry you precisely know.
If you heat your sample stage and the sample is several mm away from the pole piece, then in high vacuum the latter should not warm up and so your electron optical resolution will remain the same, however, thermal drift of the specimen stage will distort your images (the stronger, the slower your scan rate is), which you can monitor by tracking the position of a certain image feaster in successive images. You can then assume that, to a first order, the image draft rate is constant, and if your feature moves x nm/sec, then you can work out what frame rate to use in order to image features of a given size. You can also undistort your image if you either assume a constant draft rate or you measure the distortion of some feature whose geometry you precisely know.
Dear Jingdong Hu
Have a nice time and good day
Really, I don't have an experience in this issue. But I think that the raising of the temperature of the investigated sample will affect on the resolution of obtained images.
Good luck
On which material (stability)...and which detector you want use (which interaction)? About which magnification we are talking? What do you want observe (e.g. recrystallisation, grain boundaries, phase transformation etc.), and why do you want apply 200°C in SEM (reduction of contamination...)?
There are many reasons, and the effect certainly depends on the signal you want see or won't see. In so far, your question need a tiny specifiction. If your sample is stable up to clearly higher temperature (bondings), and you are using fast electrons (backscattered electron) a reduction of resolution shouldn't occur as long as you won't expect to see single atoms, but we are talking about SEM not HR-TEM.
Eating of the sample is sometime a way to increase the resolution. Mainly because heating can remove some contaminants. Unfortunately this can be a source of contamination for the microscope. Heating itself is probably not a problem for resolution but it may result contamination from heating that can causes degradation of resolution. It can happen dramatic problem when the melting point of the sample is obtained especially if the sample is vaporized all over the chamber and inside the low part of the column. Some elements are very sensitive like fluoride.
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