title: On the optical stability of high-resolution transmission electron microscopes.
abstract: In the recent two decades the technique of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy experienced an unprecedented progress through the introduction of hardware aberration correctors and by the improvement of the achievable resolution to the sub-Ångström level. The important aspect that aberration correction at a given resolution requires also a well defined amount of optical stability has received little attention so far. Therefore we investigate the qualification of a variety of high-resolution electron microscopes to maintain an aberration corrected optical state in terms of an optical lifetime. We develop a comprehensive statistical framework for the estimation of the optical lifetime and find remarkably low values between tens of seconds and a couple of minutes. Probability curves are introduced, which inform the operator about the chance to work still in the fully aberration corrected state.
authors.affiliation: Central Facility for Electron Microscopy (GFE), Aachen University (RWTH), Ahornstr. 55, 52074 Aachen, Germany; Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany. Electronic address: ju.barthel@fz-juelich.de.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Barthel
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thust
mesh_terms: D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Aberration correction; Aberrations; Astigmatism; Electron optics; HRTEM; Optical lifetime; Stability