In a scanning electron microscopy, secondary electrons are defined as the electrons which obey inelastic scattering whereas backscattering electron follow elastic scattering.
Now my question
Can backscatter electrons produce same level of solution as secondary electrons?
Best Answer
(I presume you mean resolution.)
In an SEM, the limit to resolution is almost always determined by the volume over which the electron beam interacts with the sample. If you shoot a beam into a sample at several keV, electrons will bounce around within a volume of something like a micron in size (depending on the exact voltage, the density and shape of the sample, etc.) We call this the excitation volume. Right where the beam hits, a large number of low energy electrons (secondary electrons) are generated. Since those electrons have an energy of a few tens of eV, they don't come from more than a few nm deep. Of course, secondary electrons are generated from throughout the entire excitation volume, but most of those are trapped within the sample and carried away to ground since the penetration of a low energy electron through a solid is poor. Therefore, your resolution is pretty close to the diameter of the incident beam.
Backscatter electrons by definition are collide elastically, so if your beam is something like 20 keV, then the backscatter electrons will be 20 keV too. This means they can exit the sample from deeper in the excitation volume compared to secondary electrons. Now actually, a backscatter detector sees all the electrons with more than a keV or two of energy. So there are a large number of incident electrons which give up some small amount of energy to electron-sample interactions, and THEN backscatter. In real life, a backscatter detector has a large amount of signal from inelastic electrons which are nevertheless close to the incident beam's energy. These, of course, come from a much larger volume since they are higher energy and less likely to be trapped in the sample even when emitted from a greater depth.
Therefore, practically speaking, backscatter resolution is always worse than secondary resolution. On the other hand, often backscatter sees contrast that secondary cannot see at all.
Theoretically, backscatter could produce the same resolution as secondary: imagine a graphene sheet...