University of the Basque Country University of the Basque Country

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Equipment of the month: Dual Beam, MEB-FIB, Helios Nanolab 650

The Dual Beam, Helios Nanolab 650, acquired by the University of the Basque Country and installed in the Rosalind Franklin building, in the Bizkaia Campus.

Mainly,  is considered an ideal complement in the preparation of high resolution samples for the new Titan Cubed.

Description

The equipment combines two sources of illumination, on the one hand, an electron beam with a field emission source (FE-SEM, Field Emission Scaning Electron Microscopy), and on the other hand, a focused ion beam of Ga (FIB, Focused Ion Beam). Both have the possibility to work up to an acceleration voltage of 30KV, but also at much lower voltages that favor the observation of all types of materials minimizing contamination or damage to the sample.

It also has five gas injectors, which allows the deposition, growth and realization of micro and nano structures: Pt, W, C, TEOS (insulation) and XeF2 (gas for chemical attack).

For the preparation of lamellae for further study in Electronic Transmission Microscopes, it has an Omniprobe Autoprobe 200.2 Micromanipulator.

There is also the possibility of performing microanalysis of the different samples with an EDX Aztec Energy 350 microanalysis system with an Oxford dry detector with a resolution of 124eV.

In addition, it has a wide range of detectors that allow obtaining information of the surface of the material (ETD, TLD, ICE, CBS) and even analyze the transparency of the lamella elaborated thanks to a STEM detector.

Applications

Helios Nanolab is a high resolution electronic microscope capable of analyzing the surface of a wide range of materials, making nano prototypes, nanostructures, 3D reconstructions of materials and, mainly, this equipment has been designed to prepare samples, lamellae of all type of materials for further analysis in the TEM, with the main advantage of controlling the exact position in which the lamella will be made, following its preparation, thus obtaining samples with thicknesses that allow its observation in Ultra High Resolution, therefore it is the perfect complement to the new Titan Cubed.

In short, it is a equipment with a wide versatility, with a design that makes it a high resolution microscope capable of working in an automatic and precise way.

Location

  • Rosalind Franklind Building
  • Bizkaia Campus.
  • Bº Sarriena, s / n
  • 48940, Leioa, Bizkaia

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