A New Method for Pin Point Failure Analysis Using Fib Combined Analytical Tem

Abstract

<jats:p>Recently, we developed the dedicated FIB system(FB-2000A) for the TEM specimen preparation. The system has ion optics with the maximum ion beam current density of 15 A/cm<jats:sup>2</jats:sup> and the minimum ion probe size of l0nm. In the system, the side entry type specimen stage originally designed for high resolution TEM was employed, and the drift rate of the stage during FIB milling is less than lnm/min. The FIB-TEM compatible specimen holder has been developed it made milling of specimen in FIB system and observation of milled specimen in TEM without remounting the specimen possible.. The holder was designed to rotate the specimen around the axis of specimen holder so that both side of milled surfaces can be faced to incident electron beam in TEM.</jats:p><jats:p>To improve positional resolution in pin point TEM specimen preparation, it is important to know the inside structure of specimen before starting the milling.</jats:p>

The Correlation between Ion Beam/Material Interactions and Practical FIB Specimen Preparation

“…With the rapid maturation of FIB instruments has come an equally rapid diversification of applications. In addition to TEM specimen preparation, FIB milling techniques have also been effective in producing specimens for subsequent analysis by scanning electron microscopy~SEM!, secondary ion mass spectrometry~SIMS!, scanning transmission electron microscopy~STEM!, AUGER electron spectroscopy~AES!, and atomic force microscopy~AFM; Mackenzie et al, 1993Mackenzie et al, , 1994Young et al, 1993a;Huffman et al, 1994;Ishitani et al, 1995;Kamino et al, 1998;Prenitzer et al, 1998;Stevie et al, 1999Stevie et al, , 2001Vartuli et al, 1999!. It should be noted that the fundamental concepts of ion-solid interactions presented in this work are equally applicable to any such potential application.…”

“…TEM specimen preparation have been described in the literature, this article will refer extensively to the FIB lift-out~FIB LO! method~Kirk et al, 1989; Young et al, 1990;Basile et al, 1992;Sanborn and Myers, 1992;Yater and Thompson, 1992;Overwijk et al, 1993Overwijk et al, , 1998Ishitani et al, 1994;Stevie et al, 1995Stevie et al, , 1998aHerlinger et al, 1996;Giannuzzi et al, 1997;Phaneuf et al, 1997;Sheng et al, 1997;Kamino et al, 1998;Young et al, 1998;Zhou and Zanoya, 1999;Langford and Petford-Long, 2001!.…”

Method for Cross-sectional Thin Specimen Preparation from a Specific Site Using a Combination of a Focused Ion Beam System and Intermediate Voltage Electron Microscope and Its Application to the Characterization of a Precipitate in a Steel

“…In the experiment, the Hitachi FB-2000A FIB system equipped with the FIB-TEM-compatible side entry specimen holder and Hitachi HF-2000 cold field emission analytical TEM equipped with secondary electron microscopy (SEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) capabilities were used (Kamino et al, 1998). The FIB-TEM-compatible specimen holder employed in the system was designed to enable a specimen to be totally inverted so that SEM observation of both cross-sectional surfaces was possible.…”

“…For example, results of our recent experiments revealed that structurally and elementally complicated composite materials such as magneto-optical (MO) disks could be easily and properly thinned for high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) and EDX analysis (Yaguchi et al, 1999). In this study, we discuss the method to prepare a crosssectional thin specimen (Kamino et al, 1998) from a specific precipitate in a steel using a combination of a dedicated FIB system and an intermediate voltage TEM. Application of the method to the characterization of a precipitate in a steel is also described.…”