Host: The Japan Society of Vacuum and Surface Science
In recent years, SEM has made it possible to acquire a backscattered electron (BSE) compositional image of the sample surface at a low incident voltage of 1 kV or less. However, the contrast of the composition image does not necessarily correspond to the average atomic number or density of the sample, and a phenomenon is also observed in which the composition contrast is reversed compared to that obtained at the conventional incident voltage of several kV or more. In this study, we tried to elucidate the contrast reversal phenomenon by examining the incident voltage dependence of the spectral intensity of BSE forming the composition image by using AES.
