The Agilent 8500 was designed with the user in mind. It's a wonderful tool that can deliver both very high resolution, very easy sample prep, and is very easy to use.
It's ideal for life science applications, ranging from cells to parasites, bacteria, small organisms to large organisms.
It delivers extremely high resolution, doesn't require coating the samples, provides a beam that does very low damage and let's you see things that otherwise could be damaged or hurt by a large high-voltage SEM.
Some of the examples are diatoms. These are small micro-structures, nature's nanostructures that have extremely small features nonconductive materials that otherwise with SEM's would require coating.
Other applications are parasites. And in this case the parasites themselves are very large. They typically require a big depth of focus. And because the 8500 is an SEM, it allows you this incredible depth of focus to see features that are in the front of the parasite and the back of the parasite, but at the same time, then zoom into extremely high resolution and see the small features, the follicles, or the hairs on the parasite that are of interest.
The same holds true for bacteria or viruses or other potentially interesting biological samples, where the point of interest is really the small features on this larger structure.
Sample preparation is very simple. It requires just a dehydration and then looking at the sample in its natural state.
The other area where the Agilent Field Emission SEM is ideal is for material science applications. And this is a whole host of applications, including polymers, nanotechnology, failure analysis.
What we're showing you are some examples of polystyrene beads using low-voltage technology in particular, as built into this SEM. It's easy to get extremely high resolution images of these times and materials.
Other examples of polymers and the use in low-voltage SEM are, for example, Celgard. This is membrane with very small pores, typically nanometers, several nanometers, tens of nanometers in size, used in battery technology.
These are difficult to image. They're very thin. It's very hard to image unless you use low voltage.
If you were to coat the samples, you would cover up the pores and wouldn't be able to see anything.
In the area of nanotechnology, lot of nanospheres, nanowires, carbon nanotubes, and resolution is required to see them. And there are very few techniques that allow you to get the full visual effect that low-voltage SEM enables.
We've also been able to use this kind of technique for failure analysis. Here again, the advantage is because coating is not required.
This is an analysis of a ball grid array. There was a failure in a void. And we're able to image it without coating, without additional work on the substrate.
This technology is also good for ceramics, in particular ceramic fibers or any material that is nonconductive.
So, it's the combination of high resolution, the ability to image uncoated samples, high visibility, depth of field into various materials that really gives you the advantages that only low voltage provides.
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CNPG_Agilent-8500-Field-Emission-Scanning-Electron-Microscope-FE-SEM