Electron Microscopy of surfaces has always been a topic for a few stubborn souls. In addition to the standard headaches of electron microscopes (maintenance, breakdown) one has to handle the additional complications of maintaining a clean enough vacuum to make the results mean anything. (Without vacuum control the structures observed may be due to the contaminants, and hence meaningless.) To complicate things further, in addition to conventional ex-situ sample preparation one has to clean and equilibriate the surface while still retaining thin enough regions for useful study. The final step is to work out which techniques provide surface information and learn how to exploit them. It is appropriate to look at some of the key elements that are needed.

Sample Handling: The key to success with surfaces is not really the microscopy, but instead the sample treatment. The first crucial element is control over the sputter cleaning process.(While simple heating would be less damaging, if one wants to look at something other than silicon sputter cleaning is a must.)