Application of mass-separated focused ion beams

During the last decades, focused ion beams (FIB) became a very useful and versatile tool in microelectronics industry, as well as in the field of basic and applied research and derived an exceedingly importance within the nanotechnology. For special purposes like ion milling, ion beam writing for doping or patterning from the µm- to the nm-range without any lithographic steps using Gallium and also other ion species which are of increasing interest. An introduction in design and operation of mass separated FIB systems, equipped with alloy liquid metal ion sources and the development and characterization of suited alloy liquid metal ion sources is given and their preparation and characterisation is discussed.