A novel nano-scale non-contact temperature measurement technique for crystalline materials

A new high spatial resolution non-contact temperature measurement technique (thermal scanning electron microscopy, ThSEM) is demonstrated. It employs temperature dependent thermal diffuse scattering in electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Unlike conventional scanning thermal microscopy, which uses contact probes, ThSEM is a non-contact method. In contrast to optical temperature mapping techniques, ThSEM does not have the spatial resolution limitation that arises from the optical wavelength and theoretically can reach a resolution of <10 nm. The hardware setup is very similar to the EBSD system in an SEM, which can make the integration of temperature mapping into an SEM relatively straightforward. Moreover, multiple signals or contrast mechanisms, such as temperature distributions, grain orientation maps, topographic images and elemental maps can be obtained from the same sample area depending on the specific SEM capability. This technique thus adds a new channel-the temperature signal-to the collection of existing SEM signals.