Flow Control and Thermal System Design for Wet Cell in the Scanning Electron Microscope

Abstract:

This paper describes a novel device, a wet cell, used for observation in the wet environment inside the scanning electron microscope (SEM). A Wet cell is composed of three counterparts, which are flow control system, thermal system and Wet cell body. The flow system provides continuous buffer liquid to wet cell and maintains cells living at the vacuum environment. It can control different flowrates and switch to different fluidics. Additionally, the thermal system can control the temperature inside the wet cell and maintain at 37 °C. It also offers preheating thermal module to lower the fluctuated of wet cell inside temperature. The wet cell body contains a silicon nitride film based observation window and provides a wet environment for observation between vacuum and anti-vacuum status. In this paper, we introduce the structure and experimental data of flow control and thermal system in Wet cell to let SEM easily provide lots of live imaging information such as dynamics of nano-materials and biological samples in the liquid state.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 764-765)
• Pages: 1334-1338
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.764-765.1334
• Online since: May 2015
• Authors: Cheng Yu Lee*, Hsin Hung Lee, Chun Lin Chiang, Kun Chih Tsai, Win Ti Lin
• Keywords: Buffer, Control Temperature, Heat, Liquid, Liquid Cell, Medium, Micro-Flow, Micro-Fludic, SEM, TEM, Wet, Wet Cell

References

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