Imaging and spectroscopy of secondary electrons from AlN and β-SiAlON ceramics using fountain detector

Abstract

To clarify the bright contrast of insulating ceramics in secondary electron (SE) image taken using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the low-pass secondary electron signals and images of conductive AlN and insulating β-SiAlON powders taken by fountain detector (FD) were inspected. It was found that the background component of β-SiAlON is originally strong. This component may come from the SE acceleration according to the charging. The low energy SEs of 5–20 eV were strong in AlN particles. According to the wide acceptance angle of FSED, we could not detect clear energy shift in SE spectra. These observations suggest that the bright contrast of insulating materials is not an intrinsic character of insulators but the SE3 contribution.