| AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Helium Ion Microscopy Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session HI-ThM |
| Session: | Basics of Helium Ion Microscopy |
| Presenter: | N.B. Koster, TNO Technical Sciences, Netherlands |
| Authors: | E. van Veldhoven, TNO Technical Sciences, Netherlands N.B. Koster, TNO Technical Sciences, Netherlands F.T. Molkenboer, TNO Technical Sciences, Netherlands D.J. Maas, TNO Technical Sciences, Netherlands H.W. Zandbergen, TU Delft, Netherlands P.F.A. Alkemade, TU Delft, Netherlands |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
At TNO, we focus on imaging novel materials and developing new nanofabrication applications for mainly the semiconductor and solar industry. The helium ion microscope (Orion plus Zeiss) creates new opportunities for exploration [1]. The microscope provides a sub nanometer spot size with ions that hardly scatter back. For the secondary electron image, it produces only low energy SE. The obtained image has an unique contrast, which contains information about the morphology and often grain and material contrast are clearly present. The SE’s appear only from a very local interaction volume which gives a high surface sensitivity. Single layers, small particles and thin layers of contamination can be made relative easily visible even on charging surfaces which are of great interest in the semiconductor and solar industry.
The small interaction volume created by charged species is unique and opens new ways for nanofabrication.Novel recipes are being developed to obtain high, small and dense deposition yields for Pt-precursor and small and dense high etching yields with the XeF2-precursor With the Oxford OmnigisTM and the Raith Elphy MultibeamTM. A wide set of parameters like beam current, acceleration voltage, refreshment rates, gas flows, writing patterns are being included in our research for true 3D-nanofabrication. Direct sputtering of materials for thin films are highly promising since no helium can stay trapped in the bulk material [2]. Recently we showed that it is possible to perform incisions into bulk material without any helium trapping yielding in high quality TEM samples [3]. The HIM enables a novel way for dense and high resolution nanofabrication and imaging.
[1] D Maas, E van Veldhoven, P Chen, V Sidorkin, H Salemink, E van der Drift, P Alkemade; Proceedings. of SPIE 7638 (2010)
[2] M. M. Marshall, J. Yang, A.R. Hall, Scanning, 34, 2 (2012), 101-106
[3] M. Rudneva, E van Veldhoven, S.K. Malladi, D.Maas, H.W. Zandbergen. J. Mat. Sci., 28, 8, (2013), 1013-1020