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.
Highlights
Scanning electron microscopes (SEM) have established themselves as indispensable tools within laboratories across the world and have supported diverse research projects undertaken within many scientific disciples since their development in the 1950s
Carbon contamination built up during SEM energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) can be problematic if the effect is not considered in the design of localised corrosion experiments and coatings research and may lead to erroneous conclusions; for example, in the inspection of aluminum alloy 2024-T3 (AA2024-T3) which is widely used in the aircraft industry [9]
This study highlights SES and SE chemical mapping abilities to monitor and evaluate various forms of sample contamination within an SEM chamber from evidence taken from two different DualBeam SEM instruments
Summary
Scanning electron microscopes (SEM) have established themselves as indispensable tools within laboratories across the world and have supported diverse research projects undertaken within many scientific disciples since their development in the 1950s. FIB-SEMs are widely used for TEM lamella preparation, and for creating Microelectromechanical systems and photonic meta materials through ion beam deposition In these applications the carbon is always present in different forms of bonding. The most obvious reason for this is a lack of suitable characterisation tools is the combination of multiple requirements: high surface sensitivity (akin to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), high spatial resolution (akin to Auger electron spectroscopy) [21], and the ability to identify the carbon bonding present using low beam energies (reducing sample modification) without the need for an Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) [22,23]. We consider SES/SEHI applications for both IBID and EBID
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