Electrostatic electron mirror in SEM for simultaneous imaging of top and bottom surfaces of a sample

The use of electron mirrors in aberration correction and surface-sensitive microscopy techniques such as low-energy electron microscopy has been established. However, in this work, by implementing an easy to construct, fully electrostatic electron mirror system under a sample in a conventional scanning electron microscope (SEM), we present a...

Efficient two-port electron beam splitter via a quantum interaction-free measurement

Semitransparent mirrors are standard elements in light optics for splitting light beams or creating two versions of the same image. Such mirrors do not exist in electron optics, although they could be beneficial in existing techniques such as electron interferometry and holography and could enable alternative electron imaging and spectroscopy...

Critical-current reduction in thin superconducting wires due to current crowding

We demonstrate experimentally that the critical current in superconducting NbTiN wires is dependent on their geometrical shape, due to current-crowding effects. Geometric patterns such as 90? corners and sudden expansions of wire width are shown to result in the reduction of critical currents. The results are relevant for single-photon detectors...

Geometry-dependent critical currents in superconducting nanocircuits

In this paper, we calculate the critical currents in thin superconducting strips with sharp right-angle turns, 180? turnarounds, and more complicated geometries, where all the line widths are much smaller than the Pearl length ?=2?2/d. We define the critical current as the current that reduces the Gibbs-free-energy barrier to zero. We show that...

In situ study of hydrogen silsesquioxane dissolution rate in salty and electrochemical developers

In order to better characterize the development of the electron-beam resist hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ), the authors used a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) to study its rate of dissolution in situ. The authors determined the effect of both salt concentration and applied electric potential on the development rate of HSQ. The development rates...

Electron-beam-induced deposition of 3-nm-half-pitch patterns on bulk Si

This paper demonstrates electron-beam-induced deposition of few-nm-width dense features on bulk samples by using a scanning electron-beam lithography system. To optimize the resultant features, three steps were taken: (1) features were exposed in a repetitive sequence, so as to build up the deposited features gradually across the entire pattern,...

Electrothermal simulation of superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors

We developed an electrothermal model of NbN superconducting nanowire avalanche photodetectors (SNAPs) on sapphire substrates. SNAPs are single-photon detectors consisting of the parallel connection of N superconducting nanowires. We extrapolated the physical constants of the model from experimental data and we simulated the time evolution of the...

Scanning tunneling spectroscopy on pi-conjugated phenyl-based oligomers: A simple physical model