A New EDS (X-ray) detector for the Laser-Enabled Focused Ion Beam

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Energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) is a reliable electron microscopy tool for elemental identification and chemical mapping. This equipment enables research in diverse areas that include engineering structural materials of concrete and steels, designing electronic systems of semiconductor chips and packaging, developing next-generation materials characterization tools, modelling solidification process of heat transfer and fluid flow, automotive lightweighting, and characterizing additive manufactured alloys like Inconel 625, Zn anode performance in Zn ion batteries, hydrogen embrittlement of high strength low alloy steel, corrosion and stress corrosion cracking of austenitic Fe-Cr-Ni alloys in hot, and pressurized water (hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass) and molten chloride salt mixtures (small modular reactors). In combined with the laser machining at millimeter scale in a Focused ion beam (FIB) microscope, it also enables 3D serial-sectioning based tomography which crucially seals the sampling gap from other laboratory techniques and firmly establishes a full multi-scale 3D correlative imaging and characterization flow. It will also act as the only EDS detector on the full cryo-workflow instrument, to be installed on the laser-fib, enabling characterization at frozen temperatures, ideal for soft materials and batteries. The requested EDS is a latest-generation Silicon Drift Detector (SSD) of large sensor size that forms wide solid angle of collection for quick elemental identification of regions of interest and efficient chemical mapping within 3D EDS tomography. This detector is going to be located and well maintained at the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy (CCEM) facility, accessible widely for research projects, HQP training and industrial service. This EDS system will give Canadian researchers and industrials a valuable tool a step ahead in international competitiveness.