Multiscale Microscopy via Automation: Dual Magnification ESEM Imaging by Frame Alternation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated dual magnification imaging method in Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy, enabling simultaneous multi-scale data collection and detailed analysis of catalytic surface dynamics.

Contribution

The authors developed a custom automation interface for ESEM that allows dual magnification imaging by alternating settings during data acquisition, reducing manual intervention and enabling cross-scale correlation.

Findings

Automated dual magnification imaging captures both overview and detailed surface changes.

The method enables simultaneous data collection at different scales.

Cross-scale correlations provide new insights into catalytic surface dynamics.

Abstract

In Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (ESEM) experiments, the acquisition parameters are generally kept constant throughout the collection of a data set. This limits data collection to one data set at a time, and frequent human interaction is required to maintain the image quality. Here, we use a custom-designed automation interface to minimize such supervision and allow for the collection of multiple interlaced data sets simultaneously. The oscillatory modes of an example catalytic system (hydrogen oxidation over Co foil) were employed as a tunable spatiotemporal test case. Using our automation interface, we can implement more advanced acquisition programs into the microscope that allow dual imaging - effectively bridging reaction monitoring between different length scales. By using automation to change the settings of the acquisition after each frame, we are able to capture alternating magnifications of the same process and sample location. Both a low magnification overview of the mesoscopic surface dynamics and a high magnification field of view of the ongoing structural changes of a selected surface motif were acquired. Using such truly correlative data captured with the dual magnification method, cross-scale correlations about catalytic systems including phase information can be established.