SBIR Phase II: Low Temperature Ion Source for High-Brightness Focused Ion Beams

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）二期项目将开发低温离子源（LoTIS）技术，该技术使用激光冷却来产生高亮度和低能量扩散的Cs+离子束。该技术将扩展聚焦离子束（FIB）仪器的用途，该仪器广泛用于纳米级精密加工任务；它通过解决商用离子源在精度和速度上的缺点来实现这一目标。该项目的一个主要研究目标是测量关键的离子源性能指标，即亮度，以便将其与现有离子源技术的值进行比较。LoTIS的亮度可能比工业标准液态金属离子源大10倍到100倍。具有这种改进亮度的离子源将在更宽的离子束操作能量范围内以更高的速度实现卓越的加工精度。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发改进的FIB仪器，为各种研究领域和工业应用的用户提供支持，包括纳米技术、生物技术、半导体制造和能源勘探。特别是，纳米加工应用，包括集成电路编辑和纳米级器件结构的快速原型设计，越来越受到当前离子源技术所能提供的精度的限制，这些领域的用户需要更高精度的fib。用于透射电子显微镜片层制备的fib要求精度较低，但通过使用低能量的Cs+离子，可以减少该方法提供的亚表面离子损伤。明亮的铯离子源也可以显著提高二次离子质谱（SIMS）应用中空间分辨元素映射的分辨率和通量。这项技术代表了离子源性能的一个数量级的改进，将满足FIB用户在广泛的科学和商业应用中的需求。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop low-temperature ion source (LoTIS) technology which uses laser-cooling to create a beam of Cs+ ions with high brightness and low energy spread. This technology will extend the utility of focused ion beam (FIB) instrumentation that is widely used for nanometer-scale precision machining tasks; it accomplishes this by addressing shortcomings in precision and speed afforded by commercially available ion sources. One primary research aim of this project is the measurement of a key ion source performance metric, namely brightness, in order to compare its value to that of incumbent ion source technologies. LoTIS may have a brightness that is tenfold to one hundred-fold larger than the industry standard liquid metal ion source. An ion source with such an improved brightness would enable superior machining precision at higher speeds over a broader range of ion beam operating energies.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to develop improved FIB instrumentation to empower users in a variety of research fields and industrial applications, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, semiconductor manufacturing, and energy exploration. In particular, nanomachining applications, including integrated circuit edit and rapid prototyping of nanoscale device structures, are increasingly limited by the precision afforded by current ion source technology, and the users in these areas are in need of higher-precision FIBs. FIBs employed for transmission electron microscope lamellae preparation require less precision but could benefit from reduced subsurface ion damage provided by this method, through the use of Cs+ ions at low energy. A bright source of Cs+ ions could also dramatically improve the resolution and throughput for spatially-resolved elemental mapping in secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) applications. This technique represents an order-of-magnitude ion source performance improvement that will address FIB user needs across a wide spectrum of scientific and commercial applications.