e^–Flash^FS — The Fast and Sensitive EBSD Detector

The new EBSD detector e^–Flash^FS has been designed for maximum sensitivity to allow highspeed EBSD measurements without compromising data quality – even on challenging applications like deformed or lightweight materials. To further improve the pattern quality, the cooling system of the e^–Flash^FS has been upgraded to lower its functioning temperature and therefore reduce the dark current of the CCD camera as much as possible.

Thanks to a sensitivity improvement by a factor of three and a dark current drop by a factor of four (compared to the former e^–Flash¹⁰⁰⁰), the new e^–Flash^FS detector is the best choice for all “Hough based” EBSD applications. The huge camera sensitivity improvement combined with a high speed and high efficiency phosphor screen makes the new e^–Flash^FS detector the ideal solution for dynamic experiments like in-situ heating and in-situ tensile/ compression testing.

3D EBSD is another important application that will greatly benefit from the speed and sensitivity capabilities of the new e^–Flash^FS detector.

The acquisition of a 400 x 300 pixels map/slice will now be ready in as quickly as ~2 min 10 s. This means that the data acquisition part of a 70 slices 3D EBSD data cube (8.4 M voxels) will require only ~2.5 hours.

Its excellent sensitivity makes the new e^–Flash^FS detector the perfect solution for low kV EBSD applications as well as Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction (TKD) in the SEM aka transmission EBSD (t-EBSD). Orientation mapping in transmission mode using the new detector retrofitted with the unique OPTIMUS™ TKD detector head is now possible at speeds of up to 630 frames per second (fps) while achieving an effective spatial resolution of at least 2 nm.

With typical measurement times of just a few minutes per map, on-axis TKD not only brings a remarkable increase in efficiency without affecting data quality but it also minimizes artifacts induced by beam instability.