Electrostatic Aberration Correction in LV-SEM

Abstract The resolution of a low-voltage electron microscope is limited by the chromatic and spherical aberration of the objective lens, see Fig. 1. The design of state-of-the-art objective lenses is optimised for minimal aberrations. Any significant improvement of the resolution requires an aberration corrector. Recently, correction of both Cc and Cs has been demonstrated in SEM, using a combination of magnetic and electrostatic quadrupoles and octupoles (Zach and Haider, 1995). The present paper presents an alternative design, which is based on a purely electrostatic concept, potentially simplifying the ease-of-use of an aberration corrected microscope. In 1936 Scherzer showed that the fundamental lens aberrations of round lenses are positive definite, in absence of time-varying fields and/or space charge. Negative lens aberrations, required for the correction of Cc and Cs, can only be obtained using non-round lenses, e.g. quadrupoles and octupoles (Scherzer, 1947).