Conditions required for high quality high magnification images in secondary electron-I scanning electron microscopy

High quality of secondary electron (SE) images, taken at useful magnifications of 100,000 to 200,000, require new signal generation and collection methods and new metal coating procedures. High quality is defined as the condition under which image contrast describes accurately the topographic features of the specimen in a size range that approximates the beam diameter. Such high resolution contrasts are produced by the SE (SE-I) generated by a small electron probe on the specimen surface. Tobacco mosiac virus and ferritin molecules deposited on bulk substrates were introduced as test specimens to check the image quality obtained. The SE-I signal contrast could be imaged when SE (SE-III), produced by backscattered electrons (BSE) at the pole piece of the final lens, were eliminated with an electron absorption device attached to the pole piece. This signal collection procedure will be referred to as "Secondary Electron-I Image" (SE-I image) mode. In addition to the SE-III, BSE generate SE-II in the specimen itself. On specimens deposited on bulk gold or platinum, and coated with the same metals SE-II produced a microroughness contrast that limited particle resolution in the SE-I image mode to approximately 10 nm. Reduction of SE-II and enrichment of the signal in SE-I was achieved by using continuous fine crystalline coatings of tantalum, niobium and chromium. By applying these metals in films of approximately 2.0 nm thickness, the SE-I contrast generation was found to be indepedent of the atomic number of the metal. Edge sharpness was improved when the specimens were coated with low atomic number metals. Under these conditions, the quality of images obtained in SE-I image mode equals that of images obtained in TEM from identically coated specimens and was limited only by the size of the topographic details, beam diameter and beam current.