Focused ion beams

During the last decades, the focused ion beam (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 with the development of the ano-technology. For special purposes like writing ion implantation for doping or ion beam synthesis (IBS) in the µm- as well as in the nm-range without any lithographic steps ion species other than gallium become more and more relevant. Therefore mass separated FIB systems equipped with alloy liquid metal ion sources (LMIS) play an increasing role.
Modern FIB systems and related liquid metal ion sources are introduced in detail and the broad spectrum of applications, like processes for the fabrication of nanstructures, templating, 3D ion milling or the combination of FIB implantation and wet chemical anisotropic etching as well as sample preparation techniques will be presented and discussed.