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Teaching an Old Material New Tricks: Easy and Inexpensive Focused Ion Beam (FIB) Sample Protection Using Conductive Polymers

Part of: Micrographia Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2017

Joshua A. Taillon Open the ORCID record for Joshua A. Taillon [Opens in a new window] ,
Valery Ray  and
Lourdes G. Salamanca-Riba
Joshua A. Taillon*
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Valery Ray
Affiliation:
PBS&T, MEO Engineering Company, 290 Broadway, Suite 298, Methuen, MA 01844, USA
Lourdes G. Salamanca-Riba
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
*
*Corresponding author. joshua.taillon@nist.gov
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Abstract

This letter describes an innovative spin-coating system, built from off-the-shelf components, that can easily and inexpensively be integrated into any laboratory environment. Combined with a liquid suspension of conductive polymer, such a “rotary coater” enables simple coating of planar samples to create a physical protective barrier on the sample surface. This barrier aids in charge dissipation during scanning electron microscope and focused ion beam (FIB) imaging and provides wide-scale protection of the sample surface from ion bombardment during FIB imaging and gas-assisted deposition. This polymer layer replaces the localized and time-consuming electron beam deposition step typically performed during transmission electron microscopy lamella preparation. After observation, the coating can be easily removed, if desired. The described spin-coating procedure has minimal cost while providing repeatable positive results, without the need for expensive commercial coating instrumentation.

Keywords

focused ion beamTEM lamella preparationscanning electron microscopyconductive polymerssample preparation
Type
Micrographia
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , August 2017 , pp. 872 - 877
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2017 

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Footnotes

†

Current address: Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA.

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