FEI Announces New Apreo SEM

FEI announced the new Apreo™ scanning electron microscope (SEM), offering an industry-leading range of applications. In fields ranging from materials and life sciences, to research in semiconductor, energy, and chemistry, Apreo offers exceptional versatility.

“Apreo was specifically designed to be the mid-range SEM tool of choice. Its feature set and ease of use should put it at the top of the list for our research and industrial laboratory customers that require high performance, broad versatility and easy operation over a wide range of applications for users with varying levels of expertise,” said Trisha Rice, vice president and general manager of FEI’s Materials Science Business.

Researchers and developers need to get as much microscopic information as possible from their samples. They want to be able to see materials contrast and determine the chemical or crystallographic sample properties on a wide range of samples, whether they are conductors, insulators, magnetic or beam sensitive, and they want to do so over a wide range of conditions, including: high- or low-vacuum and at different tilt angles. Apreo provides this capability.

Due to its proprietary compound final lens design, the Apreo SEM is capable of resolution down to 1.0 nm at 1 kV without the need for beam deceleration – providing high performance on nearly any sample, even if it is tilted or topographic. It offers backscatter detection at the lowest beam currents, at any tilt angle, on sensitive samples and at TV-rate imaging, so materials contrast is strong. Detector segments can be individually addressed, which allows researchers to optimize for angular contrast or for signal intensity and extract the information that matters most. It provides a wide range of approaches for dealing with insulating samples, including a low-vacuum capability with a chamber pressure of up to 500 Pa. Finally, Apreo is an excellent tool for analytics, with ports for up to three energy dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS) detectors, coplanar EDS & electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), analytics-compatible low-vacuum, and beam currents up to 400 nA.

The Apreo software provides user guidance and “point-and-click” navigation using an in-chamber camera, making it easy for even novice users to get excellent results. High-productivity labs will appreciate the ability to load multiple samples quickly and easily without tools.