Lifetime of Optical States in Transmission Electron Microscopy

In the recent two decades the technique of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) experienced an unprecedented progress through the introduction of hardware aberration correctors and by the improvement of the achievable resolution to the sub-Ångström level. With this development, also the required precision level to measure and adjust the optical properties of transmission electron microscopes has become increasingly demanding. A second important aspect of this development, which has received little attention so far, is that aberration correction at a given resolution requires also a well-defined amount of instrument stability. Therefore we investigate the qualification of a variety of high-resolution electron microscopes to maintain an aberration corrected optical state in terms of an optical lifetime.