August 6, 2008 — Carl Zeiss SMT (www.smt.zeiss.com) made several new product announcements at the recent Microscopy and Microanalysis Meeting and Exhibition in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Among them are a new class of SEM, and an additional Argon ion beam column in its NVison 40 CrossBeam workstation.
Among them, the lithography optics company is introducing a new class of SEM: SIGMA. The SIGMA, featuring the Carl Zeiss’ GEMINI technology, provides imaging and analytical results from a field emission microscope with the capability to handle all material types. Material analysis at high resolution is provided by X-ray geometry for both energy and wavelength dispersive spectroscopy (EDS and WDS).
The SIGMA can handle specimens of up to 250 mm diameter and 145 mm tall. Furthermore, the coplanar chamber design provides geometry for simultaneous EDS and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD).
The company also now offers an additional Argon ion beam column in its NVison 40 CrossBeam workstation, to enable the production of highly polished TEM lamellas.
The new low-energy Argon ion column in the NVision 40 CrossBeam workstation allows the fabrication of supreme sample quality by enabling almost complete removal of surface damage that typically occurs during the initial FIB milling steps. By employing the new triple beam technology, time consuming and cost-intensive additional polishing processes in auxiliary tools become obsolete.
The new NVision 40 Argon will be available in two dedicated models: a process oriented, high-throughput version dedicated to routine TEM sample preparation for semiconductor customers; and a multi purpose versatile version for the highest demands in processing and analytics applications in materials science and the semiconductor lab.
The Argon ion column is retrofittable to existing NVision 40 workstations. The integrated Koehler illumination system guarantees minimum beam damage, reproducible illumination conditions, and a permanently homogeneous and strictly parallel beam with exactly quantifiable dose rates.