Xe⁺ versus Ar⁺ beam damage in metals

Session

Poster Session One

Authors

Dr Wing Kwong Wong (3), Dr Jonathan Hawes (1), Dr Chengge Jiao (2), Prof Yu-Lung Chiu (3)

Affiliations

1. National Nuclear laboratory
2. Thermo Fisher Scientific
3. University of Birmingham

Keywords

Focused Ion Beam; TEM sample preparation

Abstract text

Focused ion beams (FIB) have been widely used to prepare samples for further characterisation using EBSD and/or (S)TEM where surface finishing is important. Amorphisation and forming black dots have been widely reported in many materials prepared using Ga⁺ FIB and Xe⁺ plasma FIB, which makes the high-resolution imaging and the study of irradiation damage in nuclear materials or defect analysis using diffraction contrast in the TEM challenging and sometime impossible. This work will discuss results obtained from the SRIM simulation of Xe⁺/Ar⁺ interaction with matters at energies between 1 kV and 30 kV, typically available in modern FIBs and experiment observations focusing on the surface features (dots/bubbles) formed on different metals. The work hopefully will offer guidance to the choice of ion beam and its processing parameters for TEM sample preparation in a modern FIB.