title: Aberration characteristics of immersion lenses for LVSEM.
abstract: This paper investigates the on-axis aberration characteristics of various immersion objective lenses for low voltage scanning electron microscopy (LVSEM). A simple aperture lens model is used to generate smooth axial field distributions. The simulation results show that mixed field electric-magnetic immersion lenses are predicted to have between 1.5 and 2 times smaller aberration limited probe diameters than their pure-field counterparts. At a landing energy of 1 keV, mixed field immersion lenses operating at the vacuum electrical field breakdown limit are predicted to have on-axis aberration coefficients between 50 and 60 microm, yielding an ultimate image resolution of below 1 nm. These aberrations lie in the same range as those for LVSEM systems that employ aberration correctors.
authors.affiliation: Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, National University of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260, Singapore. eleka@nus.edu.sg
authors.forename: Anjam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khursheed