Diagnostics of submicron multi-element focused ion beams from an intense microwave plasma

Focused ion beams (FIB) are highly important for applications in nanotechnology. Conventional Liquid Metal Ion Source (LMIS) based FIB systems provide primarily Gallium ions with undesirable contamination effects¹. Plasma based FIB systems can provide a variety of ions that can be selectively utilized according to applications such as structuring, implantation, irradiation studies etc. The beam currents at the substrate are found to be several orders of magnitude (>10³) larger than LMIS for a given solid angle of acceptance². Important performance parameters for FIB are the beam spot size which determines the precision of the job to be performed, the image side brightness which decides the efficiency of operation and the ion energy spread which contributes to chromatic aberration in beam optics.