Fully electrostatic low energy scanning electron column

The exploitation of low-energy electrons for examination of the material surfaces has several advantages. One of them is a small depth penetration of the primary electrons (PE) to the observed material. At low energies the charging effects on non-conductive or slightly conductive specimens are suppressed and also radiation damage of the observed specimen is decreased. Since the secondary electron (SE) yield is high, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is about one order of magnitude larger than those in microscopes operated at 20kV