Comparison between Focused Electron/Ion Beam-Induced Deposition at Room Temperature and under Cryogenic Conditions

Abstract

In this contribution, we compare the performance of Focused Electron Beam-induced Deposition (FEBID) and Focused Ion Beam-induced Deposition (FIBID) at room temperature and under cryogenic conditions (the prefix "Cryo" is used here for cryogenic). Under cryogenic conditions, the precursor material condensates on the substrate, forming a layer that is several nm thick. Its subsequent exposure to a focused electron or ion beam and posterior heating to 50 • C reveals the deposit. Due to the extremely low charge dose required, Cryo-FEBID and Cryo-FIBID are found to excel in terms of growth rate, which is typically a few hundred/thousand times higher than room-temperature deposition. Cryo-FIBID using the W(CO) 6 precursor has demonstrated the growth of metallic deposits, with resistivity not far from the corresponding deposits grown at room temperature. This paves the way for its application in circuit edit and the fast and direct growth of micro/nano-electrical contacts with decreased ion damage. The last part of the contribution is dedicated to the comparison of these techniques with other charge-based lithography techniques in terms of the charge dose required and process complexity. The comparison indicates that Cryo-FIBID is very competitive and shows great potential for future lithography developments.

Writing 3D Nanomagnets Using Focused Electron Beams

“…( b ) Comparison of speed and resolution of FEBID and its sister technique focused ion beam induced deposition (FIBID), with other emerging additive manufacturing methods for the direct writing of metallic micro- and nano- structures. FEBID at cryogenic temperatures (cryo-FEBID) enables direct-writing at very high growth rates, with slightly worse resolution [ 17 , 18 ]; a similar resolution as cryo-FEBID, with an approximately 100 increase in growth rate has been recently demonstrated using cryo-FIBID [ 19 , 20 ] (not shown here). Adapted with permission from [ 21 ].…”

Focused Ion Beam Processing for 3D Chiral Photonics Nanostructures

“…The cryogenic temperatures can help to retain the microstructures of sensitive materials when performing milling treatments for electron microscopy [ 64 ]. For FIB induced deposition, the low process temperatures cause an ultrafast growth and, at the same time, reduce the proximity effects and the ion implantations [ 65 ] improving material composition [ 63 ].…”

Single-Entity Detection With TEM-Fabricated Nanopores

“…In particular, the high-energy electrons of the TEM significantly benefit the sputtering of a membrane to generate nanopore without residual impurity (Kim et al, 2011). Compared with ion beam methods, the e-beam methods have certain advantages, including finer control and lesser damage to the substrate (Yang et al, 2017;Horak et al, 2018;De Teresa et al, 2019). Moreover, a combination of high-resolution spherical aberration-corrected TEM (Cs-corrected TEM) leads to an improved (sub-nanometer scale) fabrication and characterization of the structures, geometries, and functionalization of nanopores at the atomic levels.…”