Focused Ion Beams

Hi Everyone,

Platinum deposition and cutting of my name into a
Silicon wafer (notice the scale bar is 3 um)

0 degree view of a crater that has been cut for cross
section view.

A quick update, I just finished training to use the Focused Ion Beam yesterday so I am now fully capable of micro machining!  You can do a lot of cool stuff like writing your name into a sample, marking a sample so you can find your targets again and more relevant to my thesis, cut craters in half and see the crater profile.

Platinum deposition helps to protect the sample you want to see a cross section of and helps to bring out the contours of craters.  In parallel with this work, I'm working with Yancey Sechrest, another grad student working for Tobin on a plasma turbulence problem, to create a program that can take a stereo pair (2 images of the same crater at different angles) and recreate a 3D model of the crater.  Hopefully I'll have a post soon with the results of that project

Shu

25 degree view of a crater that has been cut.  The white stuff
is a layer of platinum deposited to make the crater edge more
visible.

Scanning Electron Microscope Pictures

Hi Everyone,

Sorry again for taking so long.  I've been away for a while (in Heidelberg, Germany playing with their accelerator) and working hard at getting scanning electron microscope (SEM) pictures of the craters I'm making with the accelerator.  So without further ado, here's some of the pictures I've taken.  I'm trying to get images of craters and then tilting the image to make a stereo pair and reconstructing a 3D model of the crater.  Enjoy!

Embedded iron particle in Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) 

Crater in PVDF

Also I'll be doing training to be able to use the Focused Ion Beam (FIB), which is essentially the same thing at the SEM but it can also cut samples and build up structures!

Image of a crater taken in a FIB

The same crater as above but with a cross section cut out

Shu