The new Melbourne nuclear microprobe system

The spatial resolution in a nuclear microprobe system has been stalled at around 1 mum for many years. In Melbourne we are presently constructing a new facility which aims to break this barrier. The key ingredients of the new facility are: (i) a novel magnetic quadrupole lens quintuplet probe forming system that is a further optimised version of the CSIRO/MARC system presently in operation in Sydney, (ii) high solid angle detectors for particles, X-rays and secondary electrons and (iii) a fast data acquisition system able to cope with greater than 20 kHz count rates from Lip to four detectors with full deadtime correction. This paper describes the optimised probe forming lens system which is comprised of four thin lenses and one thick lens to produce an orthomorphic probe forming lens system with a demagnification of 150. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.