Scanning electron microscopes are scientific instruments that use a beam of highly energetic electrons to examine objects on a very fine scale, which can give us the information such as topography, morphology, composition. They function exactly as their optical counterparts except that they use a focused beam of electrons which have much shorter wavelength instead of light to "image" the specimen.  They are configured to allow imaging of conductive inorganic objects as well as the more difficult to prepare and analyze biological specimens. Magnification up to 300,000X is well within the range of the instrument. A sample holder allows us to maintain the sample temperature from -20 ^oC to +85 ^oC. In addition to the traditional SEM functionality, this instrument is equipped with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDX). We are able to collect full atomic elemental analysis on a per pixel basis of the entire SEM image. As such we obtain extremely magnified images while simultaneously measuring the elemental content of any portion of the image.

Front view of Hitachi S-3000N SEM

Below are a few images that we obtained with the Hitachi S-3000N SEM in the W. M. Keck lab.