Most writing about scanning electron microscopy comes in two flavors: textbook chapters that have the physics but not the bench, and vendor pages that have the gloss but not the details. This site is the third thing — a field guide. What to do, in what order, and what it looks like when it goes wrong.
§1Start here
SEM Sample Preparation: A Practical Guide
Nine-tenths of image quality is decided before the chamber closes. Mounting that actually holds, the coat-or-don't-coat decision, and prep that works — material by material: metals, polymers, powders, biological material, and semiconductors. With a troubleshooting table for the day charging wins anyway.
SE vs BSE: Choosing a Detector on Purpose
Where SE1, SE2, SE3 and backscattered electrons actually come from, what each detector really collects, and why an "SE image" is never purely a surface image. With a backscatter-coefficient table and a decision list.
Sputter Coating: Metal, Carbon, and How Thick Is Too Thick
Why coat and why not, how the coater works, choosing among gold, gold–palladium, platinum, iridium, chromium and carbon, thickness discipline, and the troubleshooting table for when the plasma has opinions.
§2From the notebook
The Month Under the Beam — August 2026
Five recent papers where the SEM did real work — a rethink of SE2 and resolution, low-kV imaging of kidney tissue, dual-phase steel failing under a punch, earthstar fungi identified with explainable AI, low-voltage EDS of dispersoids — plus the meetings worth a calendar entry.
Astigmatism, or: why your image smears one way, then the other
The defect every operator meets in their first week and fights for the rest of their career. What it is, how to see it fast, and a correction routine that converges instead of wandering.
New entries weekly.
§3The library
The reference shelf this site is building, in the order the bench usually needs it. Unlinked titles are in progress.
Technique
- Sample preparation: a practical guide
- Sputter coating: metal, carbon, and how thick is too thick
- SE vs BSE: choosing a detector on purpose
- EDS without self-deception
- Low-vacuum mode: what it buys you and what it costs
- kV, spot size, working distance: a parameter cheat sheet
Troubleshooting
- Astigmatism, seen and corrected
- Charging: a field guide to the artifacts
- Drift, vibration, and other reasons your pixels move
- Why is my image noisy?
Fundamentals
- How a scanning electron microscope actually works
- Magnification is a lie: calibration and scale bars
- The vacuum system, explained calmly
- What the beam does inside your sample
Applications
- Fractography: reading a broken surface
- Particles and powders: sizing without fooling yourself
- Filters, membranes, and fibers
Analytical techniques
- EBSD: crystallography from the surface down
- SEM-Raman: chemistry meets topography
- Cathodoluminescence, EBIC, and the specialist detectors
§4The mailbag & the gallery
Ask the Field Guide
Stuck image, misbehaving sample, unnameable artifact? Write to ask@semfieldguide.com. Good questions get researched, bench-checked, and published anonymized — so the next operator finds an answer.
The Gallery
Reader-submitted micrographs, curated, with the settings that captured them. Send your best to gallery@semfieldguide.com — credit however you like, anonymity included.