Low Voltage Electron Microscopy

Dear Colleagues,

As materials systems become increasingly complex and devices reduce in size, characterization techniques with the ability to directly image materials with high resolution and high contrast are needed. Low voltage electron microscopy has seen tremendous growth in recent years due to its potential to resolve morphological details at the meso-, molecular, and atomic scale. This growth is attributed to increased scattering contrast at low voltage, increased spatial resolution when used in conjunction with certain analytical techniques, and the potential from decreased beam damage from certain classes of materials. As a secondary but important benefit, with reduced voltage typically comes decreased instrument cost and footprint, and increased accessibility for laboratories around the world, thus opening new opportunities.

With new generations of spherical aberration correctors, atomic lattice imaging with a resolution of 2 Å at 20 kV accelerating voltage is now possible. Reduced beam damage and increased contrast are major motivations for this work. In conjunction with the increased scattering contrast associated with imaging at low-voltage, however, comes with an increased severity of beam damage for broad classes of materials (polymers, organic molecular solids, biological materials). As such, electron beam damage will be an important topic in this special issue. This special issue will be open to submissions on both scanning and transmission low voltage electron microscopy, as well as analytical techniques, experimental demonstrations of electron scattering theory and fundamentals, and applications of low voltage electron microscopy.

Dr. Lawrence F. Drummy
Guest Editor