Study of ion beam damage on FIB prepared TEM samples

Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling has been widely used for the preparation of TEM specimens in both cross-section and plan view configurations. FIB induced damage is a non-negligible influence on making a thin and clear TEM specimen. Low-KV FIB is one of the solutions to reduce the ion beam damage created in current FIB operation system. An understanding of the type of FIB generated artifact on different materials is important to subsequent TEM analyses and to optimize the sample preparation process. In this paper, three types of materials, Si, ZnO and Cu have been selected to study the normal and low-KV FIB ion beam damage and the impacts for FIB prepared TEM specimens are compared.