Surface polishing and slope cut by parallel ar ion beams for high resolution electron backscatter diffraction measurements

For the large majority of materials science studies a good quality surface is extremely important. Especially, it is of great importance in case of electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) where the information depth is as shallow as some tens of nanometres and this is the reason why this analytical method requires a damage- and oxide-free sample surface. The SC-1000 SEMPrep dual Ar ion beam workstation developed by Technoorg Linda Ltd., Hungary, is suitable for both surface polishing and slope cutting of solid state samples, preparing high-quality surfaces. These surfaces allow several types of SEM investigations including the surface sensitive EBSD analysis. The present paper demonstrates the operating principle of the SC-1000 SEMPrep apparatus and its outstanding abilities. Here we present Ar ion polishing of different conductive and nonconductive materials followed by high-resolution EBSD measurements. The average image quality (IQ) number of the Kikuchi patterns has been studied as a function of polishing angle and time in order to find the optimal polishing conditions. It has also been shown that using the optimal operation parameters high-quality surfaces can be obtained on different metallic and non-metallic materials.