Abstract
We report a useful method to estimate the electron dose rate which may be a decisive factor to characterize sample properties. Even though most mircoscopes have their own exposure meters, there are several practical concerns when such exposure meters are used to measure the electron dose rate: 1) Specimen should be avoided within the entire area of exposure meter; 2) beam current has to be always recorded whenever the operation mode is changed; 3) the electron dose rate can not be calculated for the beam current beyond the detectable range. To overcome these limitations, we suggest a useful method which utilize a CCD (charge coupled device) camera which is now a popular detector to obtain the final electron micrographs. We have evaluated the CCD sensitivity using the linear relationship between electron current on the exposure meter and counter ratio on the CCD camera which are built in KBSI-HVEM (high voltage electron microscope). Applying the new method, we obtained the CCD sensitivity which are approximately 0.039 counts/$e^-$ and 1.37 counts/$e^-$ for the Top-TV and the HV-GIF CCD cameras, respectively.
