The Zeiss Neon 40 EsB dual beam field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM) installed in the Samuel Roberts Noble Microscopy Laboratory (SRNML) recently received an upgraded Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) system, allowing greater signal detection, providing improved accuracy, sensitivity, and throughput along with a new Windows 11 PC and an up-to-date software package (Aztec).
Along with focused ion beam capabilities, the Zeiss Neon is the highest resolution SEM instrument at SRNML, but the older EDS system and outdated software limited users from obtaining crucial high-quality chemical information to complement the high-resolution imaging capabilities of this instrument.
The upgrade replaced our older Oxford x-Act 10mm2 detector with an Oxford Xplore 30mm2 detector, greatly increasing X-ray counts per second by over an order of magnitude (~2000 cps to 70,000 cps), reducing analysis time, and facilitating faster mapping of beam-sensitive samples. In addition, this included replacing our older computer running a very early Aztec 2.0 analytical software package with a new computer running Windows 11, along with the latest version of the Aztec analytical software (6.1 SP1). In addition, the software is upgradeable with options to add specific functionalities through possible funding opportunities in the future, as the need arises.
The system was purchased with funds obtained from an internal Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) PhD Seed Grants & Instrumentation Funding proposal for maintaining existing shared instruments in March of this year.
