Very Large Solid Angle Windowless SDD Applications for Nanostructure and Semiconductor Applications

The use of SDDs gives numerous advantages over conventional Si(Li) detectors. Large solid angle allows data to be acquired faster in low signal regimes, and high count rate situations are handled more easily due to inherent lower noise and excellent energy resolution [1]. Due to lower noise these detectors may also be operated at near room temperatures and only Peltier type cooling is required. To achieve even greater solid angle, novel designs using non-circular sensors, or clusters of small sensors have been introduced. By minimizing the sample to crystal distance, while retaining sensor area, solid angles about 3x higher than those achieved using conventional single circular sensors have been achieved. These very high solid angle SDDs for TEM are able to detect and map elements down to the atomic level in short analysis times, hence limiting effects of drift, beam damage and sample contamination.