Lecture

Focused Ion Beam: Principles and Applications

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In course

MSE-636: Organic semiconductors

Description

This lecture covers the principles and applications of Focused Ion Beam (FIB) technology, including how it works, basic applications like imaging and milling, TEM sample preparation, FIB Nanotomography, and 3D microscopy. It explains why ions are used instead of electrons, focusing on their interaction with materials and the advantages of using Gallium. The lecture also delves into ion-solid interactions, different operating modes of FIB, and the process of ion milling. Additionally, it explores the fabrication of nanoscale structures, TEM sample preparation, and the challenges of serial sectioning for 3D reconstruction of microstructures.

Instructor

Frank Nüesch

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Elodie Didier, Ceren Mitmit, João Pedro Ferreira Assunção, Vahid Charkhesht Past EPFL PhD Students Hui Zhang, Simon Johannes Dünki, Yee Song Ko, Lei Wang, Sandra Christina Jenatsch, Nicolas Alexandre Serge Leclaire, Donatas Gesevicius, Surendra Babu Anantharaman, Markus Regnat, Philip Horst Caspari, Patrik Schürch, David Reber, Karen Verena Strassel, Sina Abdolhosseinzadeh, Matthias Diethelm, Francis Owusu, Camilla Arietta Vael-Garn, Yeerlan Adeli, Wei-Hsu Hu, Cansu Zeytun Kara

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Focused ion beam

Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. A FIB setup is a scientific instrument that resembles a scanning electron microscope (SEM). However, while the SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to image the sample in the chamber, a FIB setup uses a focused beam of ions instead.

Cryogenic electron microscopy

Cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a cryomicroscopy technique applied on samples cooled to cryogenic temperatures. For biological specimens, the structure is preserved by embedding in an environment of vitreous ice. An aqueous sample solution is applied to a grid-mesh and plunge-frozen in liquid ethane or a mixture of liquid ethane and propane. While development of the technique began in the 1970s, recent advances in detector technology and software algorithms have allowed for the determination of biomolecular structures at near-atomic resolution.

Ion source

An ion source is a device that creates atomic and molecular ions. Ion sources are used to form ions for mass spectrometers, optical emission spectrometers, particle accelerators, ion implanters and ion engines. Electron ionization Electron ionization is widely used in mass spectrometry, particularly for organic molecules. The gas phase reaction producing electron ionization is M{} + e^- -> M^{+\bullet}{} + 2e^- where M is the atom or molecule being ionized, e^- is the electron, and M^{+\bullet} is the resulting ion.

Electron microscope

An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. They use electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light, electron microscopes have a higher resolution of about 0.1 nm, which compares to about 200 nm for light microscopes.

Transmission electron microscopy

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a grid. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons with the sample as the beam is transmitted through the specimen. The image is then magnified and focused onto an imaging device, such as a fluorescent screen, a layer of photographic film, or a sensor such as a scintillator attached to a charge-coupled device.

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