title: Special raster scanning for reduction of charging effects in scanning electron microscopy.
abstract: A special raster scanning (SRS) method for reduction of charging effects is developed for the field of SEM. Both a conventional fast scan (horizontal direction) and an unusual scan (vertical direction) are adopted for acquiring raw data consisting of many sub-images. These data are converted to a proper SEM image using digital image processing techniques. About sharpness of the image and reduction of charging effects, the SRS is compared with the conventional fast scan (with frame-averaging) and the conventional slow scan. Experimental results show the effectiveness of SRS images. By a successful combination of the proposed scanning method and low accelerating voltage (LV)-SEMs, it is expected that higher-quality SEM images can be more easily acquired by the considerable reduction of charging effects, while maintaining the resolution.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Informatics, Department of Information Design, Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuhiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Eisaku
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Oho
keywords: charging effect; digital image processing; image quality; scanning; scanning electron microscope