Abstract
A helium gas field ion source has been demonstrated to be capable of realizing higher milling resolution relative to liquid gallium ion sources. One drawback, however, is that the helium ion mass is prohibitively low for reasonable sputtering rates of bulk materials, requiring a dosage that may lead to significant subsurface damage. Manipulation of suspended graphene is, therefore, a logical application for He+ milling. We demonstrate that competitive ion beam-induced deposition from residual carbonaceous contamination can be thermally mitigated via a pulsed laser-assisted He+ milling. By optimizing pulsed laser power density, frequency, and pulse width, we reduce the carbonaceous byproducts and mill graphene gaps down to sub 10 nm in highly complex kiragami patterns.
Highlights
Graphene continues to attract attention as a material with intriguing physical and chemical properties and wide potential in chemical as well as biological sensors, energy conversion and storage, nanoelectronics, light-weight composite materials, and superconducting devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Attempts to enhance the patterning resolution have been pursued by ion milling [18,19,20], carbon contamination from the graphene transfer and patterning process, made it difficult to reproducibly push the resolution to the nanometer level
We have explored laser-assisted focused ion and electron beam induced processing using a synchronized pulsed laser to enhance the purity of deposits [25,26,27,28], mitigate subsurface ion beam damage [29], and enhance chemically assisted etching [30,31]
Summary
Graphene continues to attract attention as a material with intriguing physical and chemical properties and wide potential in chemical as well as biological sensors, energy conversion and storage, nanoelectronics, light-weight composite materials, and superconducting devices [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Due to residual carbon contamination on the graphene samples, He+ beam exposure can produce competitive carbon deposition from the cracking of the hydrocarbon species adsorbed or surface diffused into the beam interaction region.
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