Fei Comapny

Craig Henry

Liang Hong

Michael Schmidt

Stacey Stone

Brennan Peterson

Jeff Blackwood

Larry Dworkin

Guus Das

Jay Jordan

Paul Keady

John Anthony Notte, Iv

Jason Harrison Arjavac

Henri Joseph Lezec

Michael Tanguay

Prasanna R Chitturi

Enrique Agorio

Mark Najarian

Christophe Roudin

Mark Darus

Young-Chung Wang

Clifford Russell Bugge

John Notte

Ion beams are directed to a substrate surface to expose a tapered, tilted surface in the substrate. The ion beams and the substrate are situated so that a first ion beam is incident along a first axis at a glancing angle, and a second ion beam is incident along a second axis in a plane defined by the glancing angle and at an angle with respect to the first axis. Exposure to the second ion beam tends to produced superior quality in the exposed surface such as by reducing curtain artifacts.

Diagonal compound mill

A method for TEM sample preparation and analysis that can be used in a FIB-SEM system without re-welds, unloads, user handling of the lamella, or a motorized flip stage. The method allows a dual beam FIB-SEM system with a typical tilt stage to be used to extract a sample to from a substrate, mount the sample onto a TEM sample holder capable of tilting, thin the sample using FIB milling, and rotate the sample so that the sample face is perpendicular to an electron column for STEM imaging.

High throughput TEM preparation processes and hardware for backside thinning of cross-sectional view lamella

Methods of extracting a TEM sample from a substrate include milling a hole on the sample and inserting a probe into the hole. The sample adheres to the probe, and can be processed on transferred while on the probe. In another embodiment, the sample is freed from a substrate and adheres to a probe by electrostatic attraction. The sample is placed onto a TEM sample holder in a vacuum chamber.

Sample preparation

A method and apparatus is described for orienting samples for charged particle beam operations. A sample is attached to a probe with a major surface of the sample at a non-normal angle to the probe shaft, and the probe shaft is rotated to reorient the sample. The invention is particularly useful for preparing planar view TEM samples. The invention allows for a sample to be mounted to a TEM grid and thinning by an ion beam without removing the grid from the vacuum chamber for reorienting. In one embodiment, a probe oriented at an angle, such as 45 degrees, to the sample stage has a probe tip with a flat area oriented parallel at 45 degrees to the probe axis, that is, the flat area is parallel to the sample stage. The flat area of the probe tip is attached to the sample, and when the probe is rotated 180 degrees, the orientation of the sample changes by 90 degrees, from horizontal to vertical. The sample can then be attached to a vertically oriented TEM grid on a sample stage. The sample stage is rotated and tilted to present the backside of the sample to the ion beam for thinning.

Planar view sample preparation

An improved method of measuring the three-dimensional surface roughness of a structure. A focused ion beam is used to mill a succession of cross-sections or 'slices' of the feature of interest at pre-selected intervals over a pre-selected measurement distance. As each cross-section is exposed, a scanning electron microscope is used to measure the relevant dimensions of the feature. Data from these successive 'slices' is then used to determine the three-dimensional surface roughness for the feature.

Method of measuring three-dimensional surface roughness of a structure

The present invention provides methods for achieving substantially damage-free material deposition using charged particle (e.g., ion, electron) or light beams for generating secondary electrons to induce deposition in a gas deposition material. Among other things, some of the methods can be used to deposit, with satisfactory throughput, a protective layer over a semiconductor feature without significantly altering the feature thereby preserving it for accurate measurement. In one embodiment, the beam is directed onto an electron-source surface next to the target surface but not within it. The beam is scanned on the electron-source surface causing secondary electrons to be emitted from the electron-source surface and enter the region over the target surface to interact with deposition gas for depositing a desired amount of material onto the target surface. In this way, materials can be deposited onto a the target surface at a suitably high rate without having to expose the target surface, itself, to the beam being used to perform the material deposition. In another embodiment, the beam is directed onto a separate electron generating surface (preferably one that has a relatively high secondary electron emission coefficient) proximal to the target surface for generating the electrons to deposit the deposition material onto the target surface.

Proximity deposition

Growing community of inventors

Aloha, OR, United States of America

Craig Henry