Electron-beam deposition inside scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used to prepare a new scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip [electron-beam deposited (EBD) tip] which has a submicron diameter and a long straight sidewall. An EBD tip as small as less than 0.1 /-lm in diameter can be formed with careful beam focusing. This EBD tip is formed to be capable of providing a low-distortion STM image of deep grooves, and is quite useful in topographic measurements of microfabricated patterns.
Changes in surface morphology have been studied for Si surfaces treated with CF4/O2 down-flow etching. It has been found that rough Si surfaces can be smoothed and Si trench corners can be rounded off using this CF4/O2 down-flow etching. A SiFxOy layer is formed on the Si surface etched by a down-flow discharged CF4/O2 gas mixture in high O2 concentration. A thick SiFxOy layer is formed at the concave part of the surface, which prevents fluorine atoms from reacting with Si. On the other hand, Si etching proceeds fast at the convex part covered with a thin SiFxOy layer. As a result, a rough Si surface is smoothed and trench corners are rounded off. By applying this treatment to a polycrystalline silicon surface, the leakage current of a SiO2 film grown on it is much reduced.
The authors have developed a magnet-type tip transfer system for use in an ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy/field ion microscopy (UHV-STM/FIM) system. The construction of the tip transfer system ensures that a tip can be introduced into the STM and the FIM in situ without any chances of tip crushing during handling. The new tip transfer system is extremely simple and reliable, and is particularly suitable for rapid tip exchange in the STM. An atom-resolved image of a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite has been obtained with a tungsten tip characterized by an FIM and transferred to an STM via this transfer system.
A new technique to improve the accuracy of the infrared radiation thermometry is presented. We combine the realtime emissivity compensation with the three-colored technique proposed to suppress the effect of stray lights. We first examined the effectiveness of the three-colored technique and found that the measurement error caused by stray lights is decreased from 150ºC to 10ºC for the sample of 650ºC.
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