Analysis of battery cathode material with the Unity BEX detector in the SEM - Oxford Instruments

Battery cathode material is analysed at low resolution on a Hitachi SU 3500 at 20 kV, a working distance of 11 mm, initially at 150x magnification. While in the greyscale BSE image (right) it is impossible to pick out contamination particles, in the coloured BEX image (left) several potential particles for closer inspection are easy to pick out. We zoom in to 350x and capture an image in which Fe and Al contamination are clear in the colour image before we focus on the individual elements in turn.