Digital detectors for electron microscopy

Film has traditionally been used for recording images in transmission electron microscopes but there is an essential need for computer-interfaced electronic detectors. Cooled-CCD detectors, developed over the past few years, though not ideal, are increasingly used as the preferred detection system in a number of applications. We describe briefly the design of CCD-based detectors, along with their main properties, which have been used in electron crystallography. A newer detector design with a much bigger sensitive area, incorporating a 2×2 tiled array of CCDs with tapered fibre optics will overcome some of the limitations of existing CCD detectors. We also describe some preliminary results for 8 keV imaging, from (direct detection) silicon hybrid pixel detectors, which offer advantages over CCDs in terms of better spatial resolution, faster readout with minimal noise.