Olshin Pavel K, Drabbels Marcel, Lorenz Ulrich J
Laboratory of Molecular Nanodynamics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Struct Dyn. 2020 Oct 1;7(5):054304. doi: 10.1063/4.0000034. eCollection 2020 Sep.
The rapid growth of the field of time-resolved and ultrafast electron microscopy has been accompanied by the active development of new instrumentation. Recently, time-resolved microscopes equipped with a field emission gun have been introduced, demonstrating great potential for experiments that benefit from the high brightness and coherence of the electron source. Here, we describe a straightforward design of a time-resolved transmission electron microscope with a Schottky field emission gun and characterize its performance. At the same time, our design gives us the flexibility to alternatively operate the instrument as if it was equipped with a flat metal photocathode. We can, thus, effectively choose to sacrifice brightness in order to obtain pulses with vastly larger numbers of electrons than from the emitter if for a given application the number of electrons is a crucial figure of merit. We believe that our straightforward and flexible design will be of great practical relevance to researchers wishing to enter the field.
时间分辨和超快电子显微镜领域的迅速发展伴随着新仪器设备的积极研发。最近，配备场发射枪的时间分辨显微镜已被推出，这显示出对于受益于电子源高亮度和相干性的实验具有巨大潜力。在此，我们描述一种配备肖特基场发射枪的时间分辨透射电子显微镜的简单设计，并对其性能进行表征。同时，我们的设计使我们能够灵活地将该仪器当作配备平面金属光电阴极的设备来运行。因此，如果对于特定应用而言电子数量是关键的性能指标，我们可以有效地选择牺牲亮度，以获得比从发射极产生的电子数量多得多的脉冲。我们相信，我们这种简单且灵活的设计对于希望进入该领域的研究人员具有极大的实际意义。
