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FIB Sample Preparation of Polymer Thin Films on Hard Substrates Using the Shadow-FIB Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2009

Suhan Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720
Gao Liu
Affiliation:
Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720
Andrew M. Minor*
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

Extract

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Focused ion beam (FIB) instrumentation has proven to be extremely useful for preparing cross-sectional samples for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations. The two most widely used methods involve milling a trench on either side of an electron-transparent window: the “H-bar” and the “lift-out” methods [1]. Although these two methods are very powerful in their versatility and ability to make site-specific TEM samples, they rely on using a sacrificial layer to protect the surface of the sample as well as the removal of a relatively large amount of material, depending on the size of the initial sample. In this article we describe a technique for making thin film cross-sections with the FIB, known as Shadow FIBing, that does not require the use of a sacrificial layer or long milling times [2].

Type
Instrumentation
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2009