Monitoring Carbon in Electron and Ion Beam Deposition within FIB-SEM

Nicholas T H Farr; Gareth M Hughes; Cornelia Rodenburg

doi:10.3390/ma14113034

Monitoring Carbon in Electron and Ion Beam Deposition within FIB-SEM

Materials (Basel). 2021 Jun 2;14(11):3034. doi: 10.3390/ma14113034.

Authors

Nicholas T H Farr¹, Gareth M Hughes², Cornelia Rodenburg¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Sir Robert Hadfield Building, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK.
² Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PH, UK.

Abstract

It is well known that carbon present in scanning electron microscopes (SEM), Focused ion beam (FIB) systems and FIB-SEMs, causes imaging artefacts and influences the quality of TEM lamellae or structures fabricated in FIB-SEMs. The severity of such effects depends not only on the quantity of carbon present but also on its bonding state. Despite this, the presence of carbon and its bonding state is not regularly monitored in FIB-SEMs. Here we demonstrated that Secondary Electron Hyperspectral Imaging (SEHI) can be implemented in different FIB-SEMs (ThermoFisher Helios G4-CXe PFIB and Helios Nanolab G3 UC) and used to observe carbon built up/removal and bonding changes resulting from electron/ion beam exposure. As well as the ability to monitor, this study also showed the capability of Plasma FIB Xe exposure to remove carbon contamination from the surface of a Ti6246 alloy without the requirement of chemical surface treatments.

Keywords: carbon contamination; carbon surface analysis; characterisation; focused ion beam microscopy; secondary electron emission; secondary electron hyperspectral imaging; secondary electron spectroscopy.

Abstract

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