Nanofabrication and Microfabrication using a Focused Ion Beam (FIB)
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Figure 1:A comparatively flat diamond indenter tip has been FIB micromachined to produce a narrow, 100-nm diameter parabolic tip for sub-micron indentation into hard materials. -
Figure 2:Zone Plate Patterned into silicon using the NPVE system. -
Figure 3:Two different ways of patterning a zone plate. A. Using a raster type pattern. In this case, the beam needs to be blanked when jumping from one ring to another. B. Using outline patterning style. The beam moves along the rings of the zone plate. The beam is blanked only when an entire ring is completed. -
Figure 4:Two strings of text nanomachined with the NPVE system on a Carl Zeiss NVision40. The size of each letter is about 2 µm. The deposited material is carbon. -
Figure 5:Nanohouse built in platinum using FIB induced deposition. The walls thickness is around 160 nm. The house was patterned using the NPVE system. -
Figure 6:Gold nanobridge built on silicon substrate. Gas assisted etching was used here to increase the removal rate of the silicon.
The precise sectioning and imaging capabilities of focused ion beam (FIB) milling, combined with its ability to etch complex patterns (including bitmapped images), make focused ion beam (FIB) microscopes the ideal tool for one-of-a-kind micromachining, or micromachining of a wide variety of materials.
Material in the range of a few nanometers (see Figure 4) to several hundreds of micrometers can be removed (sputtering) or added (FIB assisted deposition). Figure 1 represents both means of nanofabrication.
Nanofabrication has applications in many fields: device modification (circuit edit), microfluidics, AFM tip fabrication, MEMS, and much more. The FIB is the ideal tool for prototyping a wide range of devices in the R&D stage of product development, since it offers high reproducibility and scalable throughput.
