How to improve Environmental Electron Scanning Microscopes

In environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) high pressure applications have become increasingly important. Wet or biological samples can be investigated without time consuming sample preparation and potential artefacts from this preparation can be neglected. Unfortunately, the applications are limited by poor image quality. Johannes Rattenberger and his team identified and improved crucial elements so that the image quality at high pressures of a FEI Quanta 600 (field emission gun) and a FEI Quanta 200 (thermionic gun) was greatly improved by optimizing the pressure limiting system and the secondary electron (SE) detection system.

At the Fritz-Haber-Institute Johannes Rattenberger meets international colleagues who are doing research in the same field. Together they want to find other possibilities how to use the improvements for in situ analyses.

The Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck-Society was founded in 1911 as the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry and in 1953 it was incorporated in the Max Planck Society and simultaneously renamed for its first director, Fritz Haber. Their main focus concerning ESEM is on in situ analyses of catalytic processes (e.g. graphene growth on heated copper sample). With the optimized system these experiments can be done at higher pressure which enables new growth mechanisms and can result in better understanding of catalytic processes.

©Fritz-Haber-Institute