Combined focused electron beam-induced deposition and etching for the patterning of dense lines without interconnecting material

High resolution dense lines patterned by focused electron beam-induced deposition (FEBID) have been demonstrated to be promising for lithography. One of the challenges is the presence of interconnecting material, which is often carbonaceous, between the lines as a result of the Gaussian line profile. We demonstrate the use of focused electron...

Beam displacement and blur caused by fast electron beam deflection

Electrostatic beam blankers are an alternative to photo-emission sources for generating pulsed electron beams for Time-resolved Cathodoluminescence and Ultrafast Electron Microscopy. While the properties of beam blankers have been extensively investigated in the past for applications in lithography, characteristics such as the influence of...

Surface effects in simulations of scanning electron microscopy images

Background: Monte Carlo simulations of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images ignore most surface effects, such as surface plasmons. Previous experiments have shown that surface plasmons play an important role in the emission of secondary electrons (SEs).Aim: We investigate the influence of incorporating surface plasmons into simulations...

Surface effects in simulations of scanning electron microscopy images

We have investigated the contributions of surface effects to Monte Carlo simulations of top-down scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. The elastic and inelastic scattering mechanisms in typical simulations assume that the electron is deep in the bulk of the material. In this work, we correct the inelastic model for surface effects. We...

Concept and design of a beam blanker with integrated photoconductive switch for ultrafast electron microscopy

We present a new method to create ultrashort electron pulses by integrating a photoconductive switch with an electrostatic deflector. This paper discusses the feasibility of such a system by analytical and numerical calculations. We argue that ultrafast electron pulses can be achieved for micrometer scale dimensions of the blanker, which are...

Automated sub-5 nm image registration in integrated correlative fluorescence and electron microscopy using cathodoluminescence pointers

In the biological sciences, data from fluorescence and electron microscopy is correlated to allow fluorescence biomolecule identification within the cellular ultrastructure and/or ultrastructural analysis following live-cell imaging. High-accuracy (sub-100 nm) image overlay requires the addition of fiducial markers, which makes overlay accuracy...

Transmission electron imaging in the Delft multibeam scanning electron microscope 1

Our group is developing a multibeam scanning electron microscope (SEM) with 196 beams in order to increase the throughput of SEM. Three imaging systems using, respectively, transmission electron detection, secondary electron detection, and backscatter electron detection are designed in order to make it as versatile as a single beam SEM. This...

Sensitivity of secondary electron yields and SEM images to scattering parameters in MC simulations

In the simulation of secondary electron yields (SEY) and secondary electron microscopy (SEM) images, there is always the question: are we using the correct scattering cross-sections?. The three scattering processes of interest are quasi-elastic phonon scattering, elastic Mott scattering and inelastic scattering using the dielectric function...

Time-resolved cathodoluminescence microscopy with sub-nanosecond beam blanking for direct evaluation of the local density of states

We show cathodoluminescence-based time-resolved electron beam spectroscopy in order to directly probe the spontaneous emission decay rate that is modified by the local density of states in a nanoscale environment. In contrast to dedicated laser-triggered electron-microscopy setups, we use commercial hardware in a standard SEM, which allows us to...

Determination of line edge roughness in low-dose top-down scanning electron microscopy images

We investigated the off-line metrology for line edge roughness (LER) determination by using the discrete power spectral density (PSD). The study specifically addresses low-dose scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images in order to reduce the acquisition time and the risk of resist shrinkage. The first attempts are based on optimized elliptic...

Ion beams in SEM: An experiment towards a high brightness low energy spread electron impact gas ion source

A next generation ion source suitable for both high resolution focused ion beam milling and imaging applications is currently being developed. The new ion source relies on a method of which positively charged ions are extracted from a miniaturized gas chamber where neutral gas atoms become ionized by direct electron impact. The use of a very...

Parallel electron-beam-induced deposition using a multi-beam scanning electron microscope

Lithography techniques based on electron-beam-induced processes are inherently slow compared to light lithography techniques. The authors demonstrate here that the throughput can be enhanced by a factor of 196 by using a scanning electron microscope equipped with a multibeam electron source. Using electron-beam induced deposition with MeCpPtMe3...

Brightness limitations of cold field emitters caused by Coulomb interactions

Emission theory predicts that high brightness cold field emitters can enhance imaging in the electron microscope. This (neglecting chromatic aberration) is because of the large (coherent) probe current available from a high brightness source and is based on theoretically determined values of reduced brightnesses up to 1014?A/(m2?sr?V). However,...

On the influence of the sputtering in determining the resolution of a scanning ion microscope

The determination of the quality of an imaging system is not an easy task for, in general, at least three parameters, strictly interdependent, concur in defining it: resolution, contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio. The definition of resolution itself in scanning microscopy is elusive and the case of scanning ion microscopy is complicated by the...

Positioning Pd catalyst particles for carbon nanotube growth using charge patterns created with a scanning electron microscope

Positioning of charged nanoparticles with the help of charge patterns in an insulator substrate is a known method. However, the creation of charge patterns with a scanning electron microscope for this is relatively new. Here a scanning electron microscope is used for the creation of localized charge patterns in an insulator, while a glowing wire...

Sputtering limits versus signal-to-noise limits in the observation of Sn balls in a Ga+ microscope

In principle, a scanning ion microscope can produce smaller probe sizes than a scanning electron microscope because the diffraction contribution is smaller. However, the imaging resolution is often severely limited by the sputtering damage. In this article, an experimental procedure to establish the limit of a focused ion beam system for imaging...