From the physics of secondary electron emission to image contrasts in scanning electron microscopy

Image formation in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is a combination of physical processes, electron emissions from the sample, and of a technical process related to the detection of a fraction of these electrons. For the present survey of image contrasts in SEM, simplified considerations in the physics of the secondary electron emission yield, δ, are combined with the effects of a partial collection of the emitted secondary electrons. Although some consideration is initially given to the architecture of modern SEM, the main attention is devoted to the material contrasts with the respective roles of the sub-surface and surface compositions of the sample, as well as with the roles of the field effects in the vacuum gap. The recent trends of energy filtering in normal SEM and the reduction of the incident energy to a few electron volts in very low-energy electron microscopy are also considered. For an understanding by the SEM community, the mathematical expressions are explained with simple physical arguments.