A Novel Application of the FIB Lift-out Technique for 3 -D TEM Analysis

摘要

As integrated circuits (IC) become more complex and device features shrink into the deep sub-micron range, the need for preparing high precision cross-sections for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has increased significantly. This has been responsible for the ubiquitous use of focused ion beam (FIB) for TEM sample preparation. Several TEM sample preparation techniques using FIB, such as pre-thinning, lift-out and micro- sampling techniques have been published. The FIB lift-out technique allows thin membranes to be extracted from bulk material, which saves a lot of sample pre-thinning time and is very successful in the preparation of specific area cross-sections and planar samples. In this paper, the lift-out technique is extended to allow for TEM analysis to obtain defect information in 3-dimensions, i.e., a method for preparing a TEM cross-section of a TEM plan view (or cross-section) is described.