Nanostructure characterization with ions

Helium Ion Microscopy (HIM) is best known for its high resolution imaging capabilities of both conductive as well as insulating samples. Over the last decade several efforts have been made to also add high spatial resolution analytic capabilities to the instrument. In many cases the starting point for these efforts was given by existing high energy ion beam analysis techniques. In particular TOF-RBS, magnetic sector SIMS and TOF-SIMS have successfully been realized. In addition in-situ probing, and in-operando methods are used to evaluate directly the effect of ion beam irradiation on nanostructures.
New developments aim at the improving of magnetic sector SIMS and the implementation of scanning transmission ion microscopy.
This work is supported by European Union’s H-2020 research project ‘npSCOPE’ under Grant Agree-ment No. 720964 and the FNR STHIM project under grant number I7748, and by the German BMWi via Grant 03ET7016 and 03THW12F01.