Recently, Dr. Fang Liu signed a new contract with Focus e-Beam Technology Co., Ltd. on a cooperation project of electronic source. Starting from 2021 and lasting for 5 years, this project will carry out exploratory frontier research on new free electron emission sources with metal surface plasmons and new two-dimensional materials.

In recent years, great advances have been made in the field of microinstruments. One of the key advances is the low-voltage scanning electron microscope (SEM), where the electron acceleration voltage is less than 5K volts. Low-voltage SEM has smaller interaction area between electron and sample, and can get more surface sensitive information with little damage to the specimen. It plays an important role in the detection of nonconductive and life science materials, such as detection of carbon nanotubes, graphene, the surface of the semiconductor structure, as well as plant and animal tissue surface, etc. The system resolution of SEM is closely related to the characteristics of electron source. The electron beam of high resolution SEM needs the electron source with low dispersive energy and high brightness.

To explore new free electron emission source for the application of low-voltage SEM and other low-voltage and low-vacuum plane electron sources, this project aims to develop the free electron emission source with low energy dispersion and high brightness by combining the photoinduced electron emission, metal surface plasmons, and novel two-dimensional materials.

Focus e-Beam Technology Co., Ltd.(FBT), founded in 2015, is headquartered in Beijing. FBT has the capability of designing and producing high-end field emission electron microscope system and has all the core independent intellectual property rights. They can be customized according to the requirements of users and industry design, produce the professional use electron microscope system. Their ability of high-speed image data acquisition and AI big data analysis greatly improve the efficiency of nanoscale imaging detection.