Introduction “Second best no more” was the title of an article written by David C. Joy for Nature Materials [1]. The article was for highlighting a breakthrough made by a team formed between Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, USA) and Hitachi High Technologies Corporation (HHT, Japan). Sub-angstrom secondary electron (SE) images were obtained on a Hitachi HD-2700, which is a combined scanning...

OBJECTIVES To visualise the ultrastructure of the interface of SCA compomer adhesive and of Optibond composite adhesive in enamel and dentin, and to relate the findings to the marginal adaptation of these two products in mixed class V restorations. METHODS The ultrastructure was investigated using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with and without prior argon ion etching, an environmental ...

In integrated circuit industry, device metrology is crucial to the future development of semiconductor industry. Critical dimension scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM) is used as a tool for the linewidth measurement and critical dimension (CD) metrology. However, the signal intensity in a secondary electron image obtained by CD-SEM is influenced not only by geometry character of specimen but ...

INTRODUCTION AS VLSI (very large scale integration) technology evolves toward ever smaller features and multilayer designs, analysis and control of structures and compositions at the atomic level is becoming increasingly important. In 1998 Hitachi HighTechnologies Corporation released the HD-2000, a STEM (scanning transmission electron microscope) that was very well received for combining the e...

The authors present the application of wet SEM for histopathological assessment, a technology for imaging fully hydrated samples at atmospheric pressure in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Both transmission and scanning electron microscopy techniques usually require long and complex sample preparation of the tissues. In marked contrast, a rapid preparation of tissues is described for evalu...

In this paper, an insect classification method using scanning electron microphotographs is presented. Images taken by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) have a unique problem for classification in that visual features differ from each other by magnifications. Therefore, direct use of conventional methods results in inaccurate classification results. In order to successfully classify these ima...

The scanning electron microscope (SEM) is an electron microscope that produces an image of a sample by scanning it with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with the atoms in the sample, which emit secondary electrons that contain information about the surface topography and composition. The sample is scanned by the electron beam point by point, until an image of the surface is f...

By simply crushing mineral grains, suspending the powder in a liquid, and dispersing the suspension on a suitable substrate, it is possible to collect adequate compositional and structural information to identify an unknown phase using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energydispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) and an electron backscatter diffraction system (EBSD). This techn...