Analytic approaches with focused ion beams

Focused ion beams have become the number one tool for localized materials modification at the nanometer scale. While initially limited to Ga ions only the last decade has broadened the field by introducing commercial columns based on plasma sources, liquid metal alloy sources (LMAIS) and gas field ion sources (GFIS). The range of available ions now includes among others Li, Cs, many transition metals and notably several gases such H2, N2, He, Ne and Xe. While all of those have their benefits He has the highest potential to be used in high resolution analytical applications.

In this presentation I would like to present available solutions for FIB based nano-analytics that do not require an additional electron beam for the actual analysis, but where the ion is directly or indirectly responsible for the creation of the signal of interest. I will focus on the most wide spread methods which include Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) [1], Backscatter Spectrometry (BS) [2], channeling [3], as well as Ionoluminescence [4].