Questions?
Direct Electron’s ER (extended range) sensor upgrades are available for the DE-16, Celeritas, and Celeritas XS cameras. The ER sensors are designed to allow you to use one direct detector for experiments across the entire voltage range of your TEM column, from 30 – 300 kV.
In the past, monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS) direct detectors for TEM were optimized to perform at their best in the 200 kV – 300 kV beam voltage range. At lower voltages, performance was often little better than that of a traditional scintillator-coupled camera. This was a design choice that all direct detector manufacturers made because the majority of customers, particularly those working in biological Cryo-EM, were using 200 – 300 kV electron microscopes for their experiments.
However, there has long been an interest in high performance detectors for lower electron beam voltages. In materials science, certain specimens such as 2D materials are vulnerable to knock-on displacement damage from the electron beam, but this may be avoided by working at a lower beam voltage such as 60 kV. In the biological sciences, there is an interest in that developing electron microscopes and direct detectors optimized for 100 kV, which may result in cost savings that could make advanced techniques such as single particle Cryo-EM more accessible.
Direct Electron’s ER sensors are available either alongside the purchase of a camera, or as an upgrade for previously purchased cameras.
Interested in electron microscopy at even lower voltages? Direct Electron, has developed of MAPS direct detectors for low-voltage electron microscopy at less than 30 kV. See our LV-16 and SEMCam product pages for more information.