Article Abstracts | August 2007
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Helium-Ion Microscopy
A beam of individual helium ions creates images that challenge SEM and other microscopy technologies.
by Bill Ward, John A. Notte and Nicholas P. Economou, Alis Business Unit of Carl Zeiss SMT
When it comes to imaging at high magnifications, the traditional optical microscope has given way to a number of alternative technologies, each with its advantages and its shortcomings.
One, the scanning electron microscope (SEM), has been around for about 50 years and, compared with its optical ancestors, offers higher-resolution images with longer depths of field. However, advancement in image resolution of the SEM (∼2 nm in practice) has stagnated in recent years, mostly because of electron diffraction and the physics of the interactions between the beam and the sample...
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