Abstract
A focused ion beam (FIB) technique describing the preparation of specimens for in situ thermal and electrical transmission electron microscopy is presented in detail. The method can be applied to a wide range of materials and allows the sample to be thinned down to electron transparency while it is attached to the in situ chip. This offers the advantage that the specimen can have a quality in terms of contamination and damage due to the ion beam that is comparable to samples prepared by means of conventional FIB preparation. Additionally, our technique can be performed by most commercially available FIB devices and only requires three simple, custom stubs for the procedure. This should enable a large userbase for this type of sample fabrication. One further benefit of our technique is that the in situ chip can be reused to create another sample on the same chip. The quality of the samples is demonstrated by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy as well as electron energy loss spectroscopy.
Highlights
The interest in performing in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments is continuously growing
We present our focused ion beam (FIB) technique to create TEM lamellas for in situ thermal and electrical measurements
We cannot give an universal recipe in terms of FIB energies and currents that will work for every case
Summary
The interest in performing in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments is continuously growing. In situ experiments can be conducted in gaseous (Straubinger et al, 2018) or liquid (Su et al, 2019) environments to study various reactions Combinations of these external stimuli are on some occasions possible as well. We present our focused ion beam (FIB) technique to create TEM lamellas for in situ thermal and electrical measurements. These measurements require the sample to be attached to a chip that is based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The only necessary extras are a few simple, custom-made FIB holders, which can be created by any
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