Regensburg 2002 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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O: Oberflächenphysik

O 5: Rastersondentechniken (I)

O 5.7: Vortrag

Montag, 11. März 2002, 12:45–13:00, H44

Development and characterisation of a fully UHV compatible SEM column with 3 nm resolution — •J. Westermann — OMICRON Vakuumphysik GmbH

SEM has been a proven and reliable tool for a huge variety of scientific applications for decades. Recently, new challenging applications are emerging from the fields of Semiconductor- and Nanotechnology. A key issue for these applications is the non-destructive imaging of the typically very sensitive, small and thin structures with nanoscale dimensions.

The typical beam energy for conventional high resolution SEMs is in the range of 15 to 30 keV, with beam currents down to only a few 10 pico amps. This neither allows a non-destructive imaging due to the high energy of the electrons, nor a chemical characterisation due to the large penetration depth of the beam and the small beam current.

Here, we present first results with a UHV compatible version of an SEM column designed to meet the new requirements of low contaminations, low beam voltages, and high resolution with high beam currents. Performance checks on nanostructured samples prove an ultimate lateral resolution down to 3 nm.