CSUN SEM Lab

I am the faculty Director of the CSUN Department of Geological Sciences' Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Lab. I began setting up the SEM lab as a user facility in 2011, and am advising CSUN undergraduate and MS student research involving EBSD analysis. We have a tungsten gun SEM that was installed in 2002 (the FEI Quanta 600), and we recently acquired a new field emission gun SEM (TESCAN MIRA4) through a NSF MRI grant - the largest MRI awarded in CSUN history. The FE-SEM was installed in 2022 and is now fully operational.

Due to changes in CSUN's institutional policies regarding faculty research, the SEM lab will no longer be able to accommodate external users and visitors as of August 2025. We hope that the lab can reopen in the future should institutional support for research and research facilities be reinstated by CSUN leadership.

The lab is equipped with a FEI Quanta 600 W-filament SEM with SE, BSE, CL, EDS, and EBSD detectors: 

-Variable pressure modes: high vacuum, low vacuum, and environmental modes

-Oxford Instruments integrated EBSD + EDS system with Large Area Mapping function (AZtec Version 3.1) 

-Oxford Instruments Nordlys Nano ultrahigh sensitivity EBSD camera 

-Oxford Instruments 10 mm2 SiLi EDS detector with X-Stream2 pulse processor 

-Gatan MiniCL system (greyscale images only)

The lab is equipped with a TESCAN MIRA4 LMU FE-SEM with SE, BSE, CL, EDS, and EBSD detectors.

-Variable pressure modes: high vacuum and low vacuum

-Oxford Instruments integrated EBSD + EDS system with Large Area Mapping function (AZtec Version 6.0)

-Oxford Instruments Symmetry S2 EBSD system

-Oxford Instruments 100 mm2 UltimMax large area SDD detector and EDS system

-TESCAN Panchromatic CL system (185-850 nm spectral range; greyscale images only)

SEM Lab general support equipment

-Carbon coater

-Cressington gold sputter coater

EBSD support equipment

-Dedicated offline PCs for post-processing of EBSD data

-Ultrapolishing lab facilities for EBSD sample preparation

The CSUN SEM Lab Safety Instructions and Lab Etiquette Guide is posted below. All CSUN SEM Lab Users agree to abide by these rules as a condition of using the lab.