SEM Imaging Artifacts Simulator

Scanning electron microscopy produces images from secondary-electron yield, which genuinely depends on local surface angle — edges and ridges brighten because the beam's effective path length through the escape depth grows at glancing incidence. But a second, purely instrumental effect can mimic new structure: on a sample with insufficient conductivity, the beam deposits charge faster than it can be carried away, and that accumulated charge deflects the beam and modulates emission, producing streaking and blooming that track the raster scan rather than the specimen. This simulator renders a synthetic sample as a live SEM-style raster image so you can see both effects separately — tune beam energy, sample conductivity and charging-artifact strength and watch the image contrast and verdict readouts distinguish genuine topography from a charging artifact.