Adaptive aberration correction using a triode hyperbolic electron mirror

Abstract

A converging electron mirror can be used to compensate spherical and chromatic aberrations in an electron microscope. This paper presents an analytical solution to a novel triode (three electrode) hyperbolic mirror as an improvement to the well-known diode (two electrode) hyperbolic mirror for aberration correction. A weakness of the diode mirror is a lack of flexibility in changing the chromatic and spherical aberration coefficients independently without changes in the mirror geometry. In order to remove this limitation, a third electrode can be added. We calculate the optical properties of the resulting triode mirror analytically on the basis of a simple model field distribution. We present the optical properties-the object/image distance, z(0), and the coefficients of spherical and chromatic aberration, C(s) and C(c), of both mirror types from an analysis of electron trajectories in the mirror field. From this analysis, we demonstrate that while the properties of both designs are similar, the additional parameters in the triode mirror improve the range of aberration that can be corrected. The triode mirror is also able to provide a dynamic adjustment range of chromatic aberration for fixed spherical aberration and focal length, or any permutation of these three parameters. While the dynamic range depends on the values of aberration correction needed, a nominal 10% tuning range is possible for most configurations accompanied by less than 1% change in the other two properties.