Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mphil-in-micro-and-nanotechnology-enterprise-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2017/paper-1/section-a-i/1/ii/solution
Past exam of the MPhil in micro- and nanotechnology enterprise course of the University of Cambridge 2017 Paper 1 Section A(i) 1 ii Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-20
The image annotation gives probe electric current and working distance . Interpret as the probe diameter and as its convergence semiangle, in radians. To estimate that angle from the available dimensions, approximate the effective aperture plane as a distance from the specimen. With aperture radius ,The electron beam brightness measures electric current per probe area per solid angle; the supplied convention corresponds to a circular probe and a paraxial cone of solid angle approximately . The aperture diameter must be halved, and the annotated current is in picoamperes. Treating the full aperture angle as would introduce a factor-of-two error in .
This is a conditional optical estimate: the working distance is not necessarily the actual electron-optical distance from the effective aperture to the focused probe. The answer assumes that approximation, the quoted electron beam brightness at the operating voltage, and negligible optical aberrations. The 30 kV annotation gives a much shorter de Broglie wavelength than 4 nm, so a nanometre-scale probe is plausible. Actual electron microscope resolution also depends on diffraction, scattering in the specimen, signal generation and collection, signal-to-noise ratio, drift and specimen charging. A 4 nm probe does not establish that every measured edge width is 4 nm.
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