Review on the spatial resolution of transmission electron microscope

Abstract

Transmission electron microscope (TEM) is one of the most important research tools in a wide range of research fields such as chemistry, materials science, physics, and biological science. There are many factors affect the spatial resolution of TEM, including not only the construction of electron microscope and imaging mechanism, but also the nature of the sample and other reasons. In order to systematically and comprehensively understand the meaning, principle and application of TEM spatial resolution, this paper firstly briefly describes the history of TEM spatial resolution advancement, and then theoretically clarifies the concept, physical meaning, influencing factors and application scope of TEM spatial resolution, then outlines the influence of TEM electron gun, magnetic lens, image detector and internal and external environment on the resolution, the development of monochromator, aberration corrector and new image detector from the perspective of electron microscope device. Finally, from the perspective of practical applications, the mechanism of resolution degradation due to thickness, electron beam sensitivity, carbon accumulation and atomic vibrations and the corresponding solutions are highlighted.

Keywords

• nano-scale science and technology
• transmission electron microscopy
• spatial resolution
• monochromator
• aberration correction
• image detector
• thick samples
• electron beam sensitivity
• carbon contamination
• atomic vibration