Search results for "Field ion microscope"

A gas ionisation Direct-STIM detector for MeV ion microscopy

2015

Abstract Direct-Scanning Transmission Ion Microscopy (Direct-STIM) is a powerful technique that yields structural information in sub-cellular whole cell imaging. Usually, a Si p-i-n diode is used in Direct-STIM measurements as a detector. In order to overcome the detrimental effects of radiation damage which appears as a broadening in the energy resolution, we have developed a gas ionisation detector for use with a focused ion beam. The design is based on the ETH Frisch grid-less off-axis Geiger–Muller geometry. It is developed for use in a MeV ion microscope with a standard Oxford Microbeams triplet lens and scanning system. The design has a large available solid angle for other detectors …

Objective improvement of the visual quality of ion microscope images

2013

The need to operate with low ion beam fluences implies the images obtained using ion microscope (IM) are often grainy and have poor visual quality compared to what can be obtained using e.g. confocal microscopy. This results from the Poissonian distribution of counts in pixels. Here we report work on some different approaches for objectively improving the visual quality of IM images. In this work we present (i) dramatic improvement in the visual image quality of off-axis and direct-scanning transmission ion microscopy (STIM) images by suppression of zero-pixels; (ii) denoising of PIXE images using wavelet filtering and (iii) use of the feature preserving characteristics of wavelet filtering…

Bio-imaging with the helium-ion microscope: A review

2021

Scanning helium-ion microscopy (HIM) is an imaging technique with sub-nanometre resolution and is a powerful tool to resolve some of the tiniest structures in biology. In many aspects, the HIM resembles a field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), but the use of helium ions rather than electrons provides several advantages, including higher surface sensitivity, larger depth of field, and a straightforward charge-compensating electron flood gun, which enables imaging of non-conductive samples, rendering HIM a promising high-resolution imaging technique for biological samples. Starting with studies focused on medical research, the last decade has seen some particularly spectacular …

Local detection of the optical magnetic field in the near zone of dielectric samples

2000

International audience; We present a study of the influence of the probe composition on the formation of constant-height photon scanning tunneling microscope images when observing a dielectric sample. Dramatic effects due to the metallization of the tip are presented and discussed in detail. We show how the recorded images can look quite different when the probe is dielectric or coated with gold. Comparison with numerical calculations indicate that the experimental signals are of electric or magnetic nature depending on the composition of the tip. For well-defined conditions, gold-coated tips provide images of the distribution of the magnetic field intensity associated with the optical near…

Imaging and Ion-Beam Milling of Biological Specimens with the Helium-Ion Microscope

2021

Angular spreading measurements using MeV ion microscopes

2013

Abstract The sharpness of MeV ion microscope images is governed by small-angle scattering and associated lateral spreading of the ion beam in the sample. We have investigated measurement of the half-angle of the angular spreading distribution by characterising the image blurring in direct-Scanning Transmission Ion Microscopy (direct-STIM). In these tests Mylar™ foils of 0.5–6 μm were used to induce angular spreading. Images were taken of an electron microscope grid using 2 MeV protons with, and without, the foils in the beam path. The blurring was measured by fitting the width of a circular Gaussian point spread function to the images with and without the foil in position. The results show …