Xflash flatquad detector

We examined surface features of 10 regolith particles (average diameters = 68–241 μm) including iron sulfide (Supplementary Table. 1) using a field emission SEM (FE-SEM; Hitachi SU6600) at the ESCuC after the initial routine description. The particles were placed on an Au-coated holder for SEM observations, without a conductive coating, using an electrostatically controlled micromanipulation system. Until these SEM observation, the Itokawa particles had never been exposed to an atmospheric environment, thus minimizing the contamination and alteration of the studied particles^{66 (link)}. We performed secondary electron (SE) imaging at accelerating voltages of 1.5 and/or 2.0 kV under high vacuum with an electron beam current of ~10 pA.
Three Itokawa particles (RA-QD02-0286, RA-QD02-0292, and RA-QD02-0325) were transferred onto an adhesive carbon-conductive tape for further analysis. We determined the elemental compositions of their surfaces with an energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDX) using an FE-SEM (Hitachi SU6600) equipped with a X-Max^N 150 mm² (Oxford Instruments) in JAXA and an FE-SEM (Hitachi SU6600) equipped with a Bruker XFlash^® FlatQUAD detector at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS, Higashi-Okazaki, Japan). The accelerating voltage for SE imaging was 1.5 kV, whereas for EDS analysis we used 5 and 10 kV.

For morphology and structure evaluation of the fibers, SEM analyses were carried out on the highly stretched fibers using a high resolution CrossBeam^® NEON^® 40 EsB system with FEG (Field Emission Gun) from Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Germany and an SEM ULTRA plus with FEG from Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Germany, and equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) XFlash^® FlatQUAD Detector from Bruker Nano GmbH, Germany.
SEM of the fiber surface and cross sections as well as EDX scans of the cross section of the highly stretched fibers embedded in epoxy were performed to reveal topographic information and the existence of chemical elements in the fiber structure. It was important to maintain that the detection threshold of the elements was given by 0.1 wt. %. Any traces under this limit were not able to be detected using this method. SEM images were taken at 3 keV and EDX measurements at 6 keV primary beam energy. All samples were coated with carbon prior to analysis with SEM and EDX to prevent charging artefacts.