DIRECT ELECTRON, L.P. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 15f

Description

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a powerful and widely-used technique in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for characterizing the microstructure, properties, and performance of materials. However, the limited speed and sensitivity of modern EBSD detectors remains a limiting factor to large-area, low-dose, or high-throughput EBSD analysis. We propose to develop a new ultra-fast direct detection camera for EBSD and TKD capable of collecting data at more than 100,000 patterns per second (pps). Such a camera will be the first application of direct detection technology for SEM and will be an astounding leap forward, dramatically improving throughput and enabling new SEM techniques. Since the increased data acquisition capabilities of this new detector technology will generate a torrent a data, this new EBSD sensor must ultimately be integrated in an end-to-end system that is designed to store, transfer, and process such large volumes of data. Such a system will couple in-hardware edge-computing for initial data reduction and processing, as well as high-speed data transfer and powerful GPU- or HPC-based software for real-time data analysis and reconstruction. During Phase I, an initial direct detection EBSD camera, based on Direct Electron’s newest-generation TEM direct detection cameras, will be developed. This camera will be sensitive to the low-energy electrons in an SEM and will be capable of acquiring EBSD data at a speed of 4,496 patterns per second (pps)—nearly twice as fast as the fastest currently-available phosphor-coupled EBSD detectors. The demonstrator direct detection camera will be used to evaluate and demonstrate high-speed acquisition of EBSD data with and without compressive sensing techniques for on-chip data reduction. Scanning electron microscopes (SEM) are ubiquitous in materials science laboratories, so significant improvements to the widely-used SEM techniques of EBSD and TKD is certainly commercially viable. An ultra- fast EBSD direct detector improves data quality, allows microstructural studies of large specimen areas, significantly improves the throughput of SEM instruments, and enables low-dose studies. As a new enabling technology, we expect broad reception of this new ultra-fast direct detection EBSD camera.