Measurement of spatial coherence of electron beams by using a small selected-area aperture

A new method for measuring the spatial coherence of an electron beam in a transmission electron microscope is proposed. In this method, an Airy pattern produced by a circular selected-area (SA) aperture with an effective diameter of several nanometers is analyzed to obtain the degree of coherence as a function of separation in the specimen plane. Using typical TEM illumination conditions, demonstrative measurements were carried out to determine the spatial coherence length, angular size of the electron source and shape of the coherence function. Based on the results, it was shown that the ratio of the spatial coherence length to the beam radius is about 5% for a condenser aperture with a diameter of 100 μm. This means that perfectly coherent illumination exists within the small SA aperture for beam diameters larger than 560 nm. As an example application of these results, the advantage of SA diffraction over nano-beam diffraction in electron diffractive imaging is discussed. The proposed method is unaffected by temporal coherence or geometric aberrations of the lenses. The possibility of carrying out future measurements using SA apertures with conventional sizes is also discussed.

► A method for measuring the spatial coherence of an electron beam is proposed.
► An Airy pattern from a selected-area aperture with a diameter of 3 nm is analyzed.
► Degree of coherence as a function of separation in the specimen plane was obtained.
► Coherence length and angular size of the electron source were also obtained.