Re: AFM, price info

On 30 Mar 2007 00:26:17 -0700, "rene" <renevanwezel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Gregor, useful info. It has been pretty far from my experience so I'm
just getting information in. I came across a price <10K in 2004(!) on
the sci.nano group, so thought that I should investigate
possibilities. I am reading up on magnetic and acoustic modes for
this. Yes, dead shells, somebody here is doing this whole day in LM. A
quote from Oly for DIC (purely ergonomical reasons to get this) came
to 15K euro, and this was only for the DIC components and condenser.
The inverted scope with objectives was not even included. The cheapest
routine SEM is $60K (Hitachi tabletop, up to 20K mag, enough for our
goal). So if there is possibility to get AFM working on these kind of
mags (higher mags not needed), we would defenitely be interested.

René.

You can get a used SEM that will do 50KX or a bit greater for $20K or
so. JEOL, Amray, and sometimes Hitachi are in this range. FE is much
more. LaB6 is optimal between W and FE, IMO. However, SEM is not
like LM at all in care and feeding. Your electric bill will double or
triple. You will have constant work or concerns about stability of
incoming power and stability of a chiller if installed (no tap water
allowed). Vacuum integrity will always be an issue that if ignored
will lead to poor resolution.

the diatoms are SiO2 and thus, ought to be amorphous and have no
crystal lattice. If they did, it could be discerned by EBSD. Unless
there is some compelling reason to try this, I would not bother. It
is feasible that natural SiO2 does have a lattice compared to LPCVD
SiO2 as used for IC ILD. Dunno.

gg


Kiss French. Drink California.

gary at gaugler dot com
.