Focused Ion Beam with highly charged ions and noble gases General information Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor and materials science fields for site-specific analysis and deposition of materials. A high-performance FIB is an ion beam with a diameter below one micrometer in the scale of 1 A cm-2 at appropriate currents between 10 pA and 5 nA. In fact of these results a FIB can be used in lots of industrial applications as well as in basic research. A large number of possible applications are already known from the process technology in the range of integrated circuits. Principle FIB systems use a finely focused beam of ions that can be operated at low beam currents for imaging or high beam currents for site specific sputtering or milling. The lenses effect the focusing of the ion beam to few nanometers. The resulting “point” scans the surface of the material line by line. As a result secondary electrons will be removed from the surface. These ions will get detected to provide a mapping of the surface. Contrary to an electron beam, the interaction of an ion beam is obvious higher and causes major damages on the surface. This disadvantage gets minimized with the usage of light ions such as helium. The usage of highly charged ions and noble gases in HCI-FIB applications provides unprecedented possibilities. DREEBITs ion sources are an appropriate platform technology for a HCI-FIB device using highly charged ions. Advantages of DREEBITs ion sources at a focused ion beam system Performances with low particle currents Free choice of the charge state (low charged up to highly charged ions) free choice of the kinetic and potential energy Virtually all elements can be used for source operation Protons Noble gases (high and low charged) Highly charged ions from almost every element Molecule fragments Doping Short changeover times at the transition between one kind of primary ions and an other High-contrast SEM-images of a silicon sample obtained with the focused helium beam provides an indication of an ion beam diameter in the sub-micrometer range. Application Design modification Analyses of materials Defect characterizations Synthesis and repair of masks Process control function Systems for high-resolution ion microscopes