Digital detectors for electron microscopy

Film has traditionally been used for recording images in transmission electron microscopes but there is an essential need for computer-interfaced electronic detectors. Cooled-CCD detectors, developed over the past few years, though not ideal, are increasingly used as the preferred detection system in a number of applications. We describe briefly the design of CCD-based detectors, along with their main properties, which have been used in electron crystallography. A newer detector design with a Much bigger sensitive area, incorporating a 2 x 2 tiled array of CCDs with tapered fibre optics will overcome some of the limitations of existing CCD detectors. We also describe some preliminary results for 8 keV imaging, from (direct detection) silicon hybrid pixel detectors, which offer advantages over CCDs in terms of better spatial resolution, faster readout with minimal noise. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B,V. All rights reserved.