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 10 nm.

When necessary, the effective spatial resolution can be improved down to 2 nm by using a smaller aperture on the SEM column and still reach acquisition speeds of up to 300 fps with very good indexing rates. With typical measurement times of just a few minutes per map, high-speed TKD not only brings a remarkable increase in efficiency but it also minimizes artifacts induced by beam instability.