This book (Practical Electron Microscopy and Database) is a reference for TEM and SEM students, operators, engineers, technicians, managers, and researchers.
 

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Figure 1960a shows typical Ronchigrams taken at the edge of an amorphous carbon film. At defoci (defined by z-height), there is a distance between the electron cross-over and the point on the specimen along the optic axis. At large underfocus, electron rays at all angles cross the optic axis after the specimen and it shows a shadow image of the specimen edge. At small underfocus, low-angle rays cross the optic axis after the specimen, while high-angle rays cross before the specimen due to spherical aberration. Therefore, the shadow image changes in magnification as a function of the angle. The low-angle asymmetry indicates the presence of astigmatism. At Gaussian focus, the lowest-angle rays cross the axis at the specimen, while higher-angle rays cross before the specimen due to the spherical aberration. The coma free axis is defined at this focus and all alignment and positioning of detectors and apertures can be performed with respect to the low-angle “disk”. Defocus and spherical aberration can effectively cancel each other at those lowest angles. Axial astigmatism can be accurately corrected by using the stigmator coils, resulting in circularly symmetric Ronchigram features. At overfocus, rays at all angles cross the axis before the specimen.

The Ronchigrams of a thin <110> silicon (Si) film in Figure 1960b shows the diffraction effects and fringes arising from the specimen periodicities. The visibility of the characteristic fringes depends on the precision of specimen tilt and the degree of probe coherence in a specific crystalline orientation. Figure 1960b (a) shows the Ronchigram at small underfocus. The lattice fringes are visible near the Ronchigram center and become extremely distorted at high angles because of the spherical aberration. Figure 1960b (b) shows the Ronchigram near Scherzer focus. The central fringes are large and wide. Figure 1960b (c) shows the Ronchigram at slight overfocus. The fringe spacing decreases with increasing angle from the Ronchigram center.

In STEM-related measurements, it is possible to reduce the convergence of the electron beam and thus the tail produced by spherical aberration, by reducing the size of the C2 aperture, but this is at the expense of the total probe current.

In general, objective pole pieces with small top bore in TEMs have been suggested to have advantages of low spherical and chromatic aberrations and reduced condenser action.

Comparing with side-entry specimen stages, top-entry specimen stages have better probe system parameters (e.g. C_s and C_c), and the X-ray spectrometers closer to the specimen.

[1] E.M. James, N.D. Browning, Practical aspects of atomic resolution imaging and analysis in STEM, Ultramicroscopy 78 (1999) 125-139.