MICROSCOPY Vol.46▶No.3 2011
â– Reviews

Present status and future prospects of aberration corrected TEM/STEM

Nobuo Tanaka

Abstract: Since the latter part of 1990, aberration correction technology, particularly of spherical aberration correction, has been developed. Its installation first started on TEM and next on STEM, which realized the point-to-point resolution of electron microscopes less than 0.1 nm. Recently, chromatic aberration correction instruments are also developed in Germany and Japan. The next targets of electron microscopy are the point-to-point resolution less than 0.04 nm (=40 pm) and three-dimensional observation at atomic dimension. The present paper reviews the history and present status of aberration corrected electron microscopy in order to see the future prospects.

Key words: Spherical/chromatic aberration correction, TEM/STEM, Nano analysis technique, Improvement of resolution, Three-dimensional observation