Characterization Equipment

Hitachi SU-8230 | McGill Electron Microscopy Research Group

SU-8230 SEM

The Hitachi SU-8230 cold field-emission SEM has a resolution of 0.4 nm at 30 keV and 3 nm at 0.05 keV, allowing to gather incredible surface details or work in STEM mode on thin specimens. Its mild auto-flash feature ensures the highest brightness at all time, giving high spatial resolution and higher signal to noise ratio in imaging mode and higher x-ray generation rate.

Maximum probe current around 10-20 nA
In-lens SE/BSE detectors with energy filtration (Upper and Top det.)
In-chamber SE detector
Solid-state photodiode BSE detector (5 quadrants)
STEM BF detector with apertures
Solid-state ADF/HAADF detector with ajustable collection angles
Bruker XFlash 6|60 60mm2 SDD
4 quadrants Bruker FlatQuad 5060F SDD (1.2 Sr)
Downstream eCloud in-situ cleaning

SU-9000 SEM/STEM

The Hitachi SU-9000 cold field-emission SEM/STEM is the perfect combination of SEM and STEM in a single instrument. It has a resolution of 0.16 nm at 30 keV in BF mode and 0.4 nm in SE mode. It has lattice resolution and provides invaluable performances at low beam energy. It is equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), and convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) in addition to several SEM/STEM detectors.

Maximum probe current around 10-30 nA
In-lens SE/BSE detectors with energy filtration (Upper and Top det.)
STEM BF detector with apertures
Solid-state ADF/HAADF detector with 4 quadrants and low-angle sector
Oxford Instrument windowless Extreme 100 mm2 SDD
1600 x 1200 CDD for CBED
Low voltage EELS (20, 30 kV)
Downstream eCloud in-situ cleaning

NX-5000 DUAL-FIB/SEM

The Hitachi NX-5000 (Ethos) is a dual-FIB with a cold-field emission SEM column providing nanometer scale imaging and a liquid Ga FIB column to produce thin TEM lamella or 3D reconstruction of materials microstructure. It is equipped with an EDS/EBSD combo from Oxford Instruments as well as a Quorum cryo-system for preparing soft materials. The NX-5000 also provides Ar+ milling with a third column used to finish surfaces after the Ga milling with with 1 or 2 kV milling.

Cold-field emitter
SEM resolution: 1.5 nm at 1 kV, 0.7 nm at 15 kV
Probe current 5 pA - 10 nA
Acc. voltages from 0.1 to 30 kV
SE/BSE in-lens detectors (SE(U), BSE(U), BSE(L)
In-chamber SE detector (SE(L))

Ga liquid metal ion source
Max FIB probe current 100 nA
FIB resolution 4 nm at 30 kV, 60 nm at 2 kV

Shared Equipment

McGill Materials Characterization (MMC) Equipment

SU-8000

The Hitachi SU - 8000 cold field FE-SEM has a resolution of 0.5 nm at 30 keV and 2 nm at 0.2 keV. It has one secondary electron (SE) lower detector, one SE upper detector and one backscattered electron (BSE) top with various modes of energy filtration, a five quadrant BSE detector, a STEM detector that works in bright field, an electron convertor that allows to use the SE lower detector for dark field STEM imaging, a 80 mm2 X-Max SDD EDS detector (Oxford Instrument) and the EBSD Nordlys II System (Oxford Instrument). The maximum probe current is 30 nA and this allows to perform quantitative x-ray microanalysis at low voltage and in the STEM mode.

For more information, please contact florence.paray@mcgill.ca

XRD | McGill Electron Microscopy Research Group

SU-3500

The Hitachi SU – 3500 Variable Pressure Scanning Electron Microscope (VP-SEM) has a resolution of 3 nm at 30 keV and 7 nm at 3 keV in the vacuum mode. It is equipped with a 80 mm2 X-Max SDD EDS detector (Oxford Instrument) with the EBSD AztecHKL Advanced system with Nordlysnano (Oxford Instrument). The high probe current of this microscope, 1 μA with the software allows the automatic EDS-EBSD mapping to perform montage of all the region of a given specimen automatically at very high speed. The BSE detector allows to obtain a quantitative tree dimensional maps of the surface of a specimen, allowing to quantify complicated ans/or rough surfaces. The low vacuum mode allows characterizing non-conductive materials without coatings.

For more information, please contact florence.paray@mcgill.ca

Bruker D8 Discovery X-Ray Diffractometer