XL-30 ESEM is capable of imaging almost any sample. The only exceptions are volatile liquids, gases and samples that are too large. It is possible to image water and many other liquids by cooling them to a temperature where their vapor pressure becomes low enough to prevent unwanted evaporation at the chosen pressure of operation. (Liquids are seen as dark opaque shapes because the electrons do not penetrate through the liquid in the way light waves do through water.)

Water content is often very important for a sample's integrity. For example biological materials and foodstuffs would rapidly dehydrate even at the relatively high pressures possible in an ESEM. However imaging in the ESEM is commonly performed in an atmosphere of water vapor, which by appropriate choice of pressure and temperature allows the operator to determine whether water is evaporated or condensed on to the sample. Thus for example one can condense water droplets on a spider web, or watch a snowflake melt and then refreeze it. Because the water vapor acts to neutralize any charge buildup on the surface of the sample, almost no preparation is required. Thus it is possible to image dirty or corroded surfaces, paints and other synthetic finishes, glasses, ceramics, rocks, minerals, polymers and any other materials with low electrical conductivity, all without having to coat the samples with a conductive layer of gold or carbon. This means that everything is seen in its natural state.

The unique conditions available within an ESEM make them useful for a large variety of experiments, not usually possible in an SEM. Besides cooling the sample, it is possible to heat it as high as 1500 C. Special stages can be constructed so that samples can be subjected to failure analysis; for example by using a strain stage to fracture materials. Such events can be video taped for repeated viewing and for timing. Additionally this machine has a TSL electron backscatter pattern (EBSP) and phase identification system for determining the orientation of crystalline grains in a sample. The results from automatic stage or beam scanning are stored and may be displayed in a variety of different ways including colored maps and pole figures. It has a video printer for quickly producing good quality images and has the ability to save digital images in tagged image file format (TIFF) to a hard disk or Zip disk, which makes the images transferable to other computer systems.

Electron Gun: Field Emission
Operating Voltage:
Resolution:
Magnification:
Image media: Digital storage, Video printer
Detectors:
High Vacuum Mode:

• Everhart-Thornely secondary electron detectors (ETD)
• Solid state back scattered electron detector (BSE)
• TSL electrons back scatter pattern and phase identification

Wet mode:

• Gaseous secondary electron detector
• Wide field and x-ray detectors
• Back scattered electron detector (BSE).

SEM-EDS Elemental Mapping:
LENS™ deposited Ti-35Nb-7Zr-9Ta + 2B composite
 

Electron Back Scattered Diffraction (EBSD):

Inverse pole figure of LensTM deposited and b-solutionized Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta alloy

LENS™ b-solutionized texture map
Absence of any strong b texture parallel to tensile axis
Inverse pole figure of LensTM deposited and b-solutionized Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta alloy