Geology

Cathodoluminescence imaging is particularly useful for providing mineralogical information. The color and intensity of the emitted light gives insight into processes as crystal growth, replacement, deformation, provenance, and defect structures and can be used to fingerprint minerals down to
the resolution of a scanning electron microscope.

Nano Photonics

The SPARC offers a very powerful method to study optical phenomena at the nanoscale and to understand how light couples to matter in a fundamental way. It is also a useful tool for improving the performance of optoelectronic devices, because the light-emission maps created with the technique reflect the local density of electromagnetic states, a quantity that determines how well light couples to matter and vice versa (1).
The SPARC enables the study of nanostructures with deep-subwavelength resolution. The electron beam is used to excite nanostructures and the cathodoluminescence detector is subsequently used to detect the generated light. The higher detection efficiency not only leads to better results, but also makes it possible to do a whole new type of nanophotonics research; angle resolved measurements.
With this new detection method, the direction in which the light is emitted from an excited structure can be mapped as a function of the excitation position.
(1) Electron beams set nanostructures aglow, Nature 493, 143 (10 January 2013) doi:10.1038/493143a

Spectral Mode

When the SPARC system is used in spectral mode, the light from the mirror is focused on a grating, as part of a Czerny-Turner spectrograph. A silicon detector is connected to the spectrograph resulting in optimized detection over the range of 400-900 nm. By scanning the e-beam across the sample,a hyperspectral image is made.

Angular Mode

The SPARC provides the unique option to acquire angleresolved images. Instead of focusing the light signal on a grating, an image of the mirror is projected onto an imaging camera. This allows for the detection of the directionality of the emitted light; also known as momentum spectroscopy. In this mode a filter wheel is used to spectrally distinguish the different emission wavelengths.

Cathodoluminescence color imaging

Adding a PMT to your setup allows to do easy and fast acquisition of photons and further reducing the measurement time to acquire CL colour images. By adding a monochromator this can be either done for all photons, or for individual wavelengths. This will also enhance the field of view.