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Liftout of High-Quality Thin Sections of a Perovskite Oxide Thin Film Using a Xenon Plasma Focused Ion Beam Microscope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

Ian MacLaren Open the ORCID record for Ian MacLaren [Opens in a new window] ,
Magnus Nord ,
Chengge Jiao  and
Emrah Yücelen
Ian MacLaren*
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Magnus Nord
Affiliation:
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Chengge Jiao
Affiliation:
Materials & Structural Analysis, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Achtsewegnoord 5, 5651GG Eindhoven, Netherlands
Emrah Yücelen
Affiliation:
Materials & Structural Analysis, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Achtsewegnoord 5, 5651GG Eindhoven, Netherlands
*
*Author for correspondence: Ian MacLaren, E-mail: ian.maclaren@glasgow.ac.uk
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Abstract

It is shown that a xenon plasma focused ion beam (FIB) microscope is an excellent tool for high-quality preparation of functional oxide thin films for atomic resolution electron microscopy. Samples may be prepared rapidly, at least as fast as those prepared using conventional gallium FIB. Moreover, the surface quality after 2 kV final polishing with the Xe beam is exceptional with only about 3 nm of amorphized surface present. The sample quality was of a suitably high quality to allow atomic resolution high-angle annular dark field imaging and integrated differential phase contrast without any further preparation, and the resulting images were good enough for quantitative evaluation of atomic positions to reveal the oxygen octahedral tilt pattern. This suggests that such xenon plasma FIB instruments may find widespread application in transmission electron microscope and scanning transmission electron microscope specimen preparation.

Keywords

aberration corrected stemfocused ion beamliftout preparationperovskite oxidesthin films
Type
Materials Science Applications
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 115 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2019 

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Footnotes

†

Now at: Station Q Delft, Microsoft Corporation, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, Netherlands.

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