Forum 04/21/2005

“The Next Big Thing in Electron Microscopy”

George Scholes – FEI Company

Aberration Correctors are a technology that has been in existence for some time but have been under utilized for many reasons. Technically, the biggest reason has been their adaptation to current (S)TEM systems. What researchers have been asking for from the Electron Microscope manufacturers is a STABLE (S)TEM platform that aberration correctors could be adapted to.  Here the manufacturers have taken different approaches. One is to adapt correctors to current systems and make incremental performance improvements in order to end up with a system that will take full advantage of the corrector technology. The other, the route FEI has chosen, is to develop a new (S)TEM system from the ground up as a dedicated aberration corrector platform and incorporate this new technology into the future correctors. This talk will go through the highlights of this project and show current results from this new platform.