Zeiss Gemini 500; Copyright: Gillian Kiliani

The Zeiss Gemini 500 is our state of the art SEM for material analysis. Equipped with various detectors for secondary as well as backscattered electrons, it is capable of resolutions down to 0.5 nm (at 15 kV) within a large range of acceleration voltage of 0.02 - 30 kV. A variable pressure option allows for images in the range of 10 - 500 Pa (InLens < 150 Pa) with a resolution of 1.4 nm at 3 kV. A drift-compensated frame-averaging mode yields high quality images even for samples with charging effects.

Our detectors in detail:

  • SE detector for secondary and backscattered electrons with the possibility of applying a positive as well as negative bias which may be used to obtain a pseudo-backscattered image
  • InLens detector for secondary electrons with high resolution
  • EsB detector, also inlens, for high energy backscattered electrons
  • VP-SE detector for secondary electrons at high pressures
  • VP-BSE detector for backscattered electrons at high pressures
  • EDX Ultim Max 100 for analysis of emitted X-rays, capable of detecting light elements starting from beryllium
  • EBSD AZtec Advanced for images displaying crystallographic information of the sample surface via backscattered electron diffraction