Abstract
Low energy ion beams are being increasingly viewed as an alternative to, or even as areplacement for, low voltage SEMs. The beam interaction volumes in both cases are comparable in their size and their proximity to the sample surface, and both can produce high quality secondary electron images. However, although a cursory comparison of ion generated SE (iSE) and electron generated SE (eSE) images of the same area of a sample shows micrographs that can look very similar this is misleading because the nature of the iSE and eSE images are quite distinct. More experimental data and additional analysis of the beam interactions is therefore required if images are to be properly nterpreted.The yield de of eSE, rises rapidly with incident beam energy E reaching a maximum value which is typically in the range 1.5-2 and occurs at an energy of a few hundred eV before then falling away as about 1/E.. In the case of ion beam irradiation the kinetic production of iSE commences at a particle velocity of about 107cm/sec 30eV for He, (3keV for Ar) producing a yield di of iSE which rises almost linearly with the accelerating voltage and reaches typical values of 1.5 - 2.5 for energies of the order of 20- 30kV. Thus while at low energies the eSE and iSE yields are comparable in magnitude, at higher energies the iSE yield is an order of magnitude or more larger. The iSE yield will eventually each a maximum value and then begin to fall when once the interaction volume lies mostly below the escape depth of the SE. Both eSE and iSE yields also display a marked - although apparently chaotic - dependence on the atomic number of the target (Z2) and, in the ion case, on the atomic number of the ion (Z1) itself. In the electron case the minima in the SE yield versus Z2 plot correspond to shell filling but there is presently insufficient evidence to confirm if the same is true for the ion SE case. Because the stopping powers of ion and electrons, and hence their range in a given material, are
different it can be presumed that effects such as topographic contrast will be different in both magnitude and functional form although measured data about this is limited.
