JEOL
USA, a leading supplier of electron microscopes and
scientific instruments for nanotechnology, announced today that it has
completed installation and acceptance of its first thermal field
emission electron microprobe in the United States. The microprobe was
installed at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in one of the
world’s most technically advanced laboratories for developing
new technologies and standards for a wide range of nanotechnology
fields.
The JEOL JXA-8500F electron microscope
A fully-automated, high-throughput versatile electron probe
microanalyzer (EPMA), the JEOL JXA-8500F is a unique type of electron
microscope with analytical ability that surpasses that of even the most
advanced scanning electron microscopes (SEM) available today. While
most manufacturers and researchers choose the SEM, the EPMA has more of
a niche market for customers requiring the ultimate quantitative
results and data acquisition.
The ability to simultaneously utilize an energy dispersive
x-ray spectrometer (EDS) and up to five wavelength dispersive x-ray
spectrometers (WDS) increases speed for elemental analysis of
nanometric sample areas. All but a few of the elements on the periodic
table can be analyzed. As a result, this “super”
microprobe is ideal for the materials, geological, and petrological
fields.
The JXA-8500F is the only EPMA to use a Schottky-type field
emission gun. The probe diameter is 1/10th the size of conventional
probes.
“This new FE gun allows us to analyze extremely
small features by operating at low kV and high beam
currents,” Charles Nielsen, vice president of JEOL USA, Inc.
“The analytical ability of this instrument makes it possible
to measure features and map them with a resolution approaching one
hundred nanometers.”
The analytical ability of the microprobe comes at a higher
price than the SEM, Nielsen adds, noting that the price is about 20%
higher than conventional EPMA. JEOL, with headquarters in Akashima,
Japan, is the market leader in sales of microprobes.
The JXA-8500F utilizes X-ray spectrometry and allows for high
speed, high accuracy qualitative and quantitative in-depth surface
analysis as well as area analysis.
JEOL's Surface Analysis product line is comprised of three
categories: Auger Microanalyzers, Electron Probe Microanalyzers (EPMA),
and Photoelectron Spectrometers.