The earliest historical contribution to the idea of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) was probably made by H. Stintzing in 1927 in a German patent application (Stintzing, 1927). In his patent he proposed irradiating a sample with a narrowly collimated beam (light, X-ray, corpuscles) and moving the sample transversely to the beam. The magnitude of interaction between beam and sample was to be measured by a sufficiently sensitive recording device, to be amplified and then displayed on an electron tube. This idea aimed to determine the size of small particles not accessible to light microscopy. However, the method proposed was unable to generate a magnified image.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reichelt, R. (2007). Scanning Electron Microscopy. In: Hawkes, P.W., Spence, J.C.H. (eds) Science of Microscopy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49762-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-49762-4_3
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-25296-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-49762-4
eBook Packages: Chemistry and Materials ScienceChemistry and Material Science (R0)