Thermo Scientific ColorSEM technology

The Thermo Scientific ColorSEM technology includes integrated elemental analysis with colour imaging, enabling scientists, engineers and researchers to instantly view and analyse meaningful elemental content that is differentiated by colour directly from a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

The product produces live colour images directly within the simplified SEM user interface (UI) without switching to conventional energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) analysis or another user interface. Immediate access to colourised elemental information means users can see differences they may have otherwise missed in regular SEM imaging. It therefore allows users to generate more complete information from their samples.

Scientists, researchers and engineers using SEM need to observe similarities and differences within their samples, but greyscale SEM imaging lacks elemental composition information. Elemental content produced with the ColorSEM technology is automatically generated with differentiated colours, allowing users to immediately see defects or tell features apart in a sample area.

Furthermore, by integrating the SEM and EDS into one imaging technique, ColorSEM increases productivity and eliminates the need to move from one UI to another, which can be time-consuming and intimidating for inexperienced users. The fast, easy-to-use process should make it possible for academic institutions to accommodate more researchers within a single multi-user lab with a higher throughput.