Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a microscopy technique in which a beam of electrons is transmitted through a specimen to form an image. The specimen is most often an ultrathin section less than 100 nm thick or a suspension on a grid. An image is formed from the interaction of the electrons with the sample as the beam is transmitted through the specimen. The image is then magnified and focused onto an imaging device, such as a fluorescent screen, a layer of photographic film, or a sensor such as a scintillator attached to a charge-coupled device.
Electron-beam lithography is the practice of scanning a focused beam of electrons to draw custom shapes on a surface covered with an electron-sensitive film called a resist (exposing). The electron beam changes the solubility of the resist, enabling selective removal of either the exposed or non-exposed regions of the resist by immersing it in a solvent (developing). The purpose, as with photolithography, is to create very small structures in the resist that can subsequently be transferred to the substrate material, often by etching.
A nanoruler is a ruler of tiny proportions, made of a silicon crystal lattice structure. Since it can accurately measure fractions of nanometers, it could help standardize the future nanotechnology industry. Since the characteristics of silicon are well understood, the distance between one crystal lattice line to another is well known. Therefore, counting these lines can reveal a fairly accurate measurement.
Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, is a British electrical engineer.
Masklesslithography (MPL) is a photomask-less photolithography-like technology used to project or focal-spot write the image pattern onto a chemical resist-coated substrate by means of UV radiation or electron beam.
Focused ion beam, also known as FIB, is a technique used particularly in the semiconductor industry, materials science and increasingly in the biological field for site-specific analysis, deposition, and ablation of materials. A FIB setup is a scientific instrument that resembles a scanning electron microscope (SEM). However, while the SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to image the sample in the chamber, a FIB setup uses a focused beam of ions instead. FIB can also be incorporated in a system with both electron and ion beam columns, allowing the same feature to be investigated using either of the beams. FIB should not be confused with using a beam of focused ions for direct write lithography. These are generally quite different systems where the material is modified by other mechanisms.
Extreme ultraviolet radiation or high-energy ultraviolet radiation is electromagnetic radiation in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning wavelengths from 124 nm down to 10 nm, and therefore having photons with energies from 10 eV up to 124 eV. EUV is naturally generated by the solar corona and artificially by plasma, high harmonic generation sources and synchrotron light sources. Since UVC extends to 100 nm, there is some overlap in the terms.
The atomic de Broglie microscope is an imaging system which is expected to provide resolution at the nanometer scale. It is sometimes referred to as a "nanoscope."
Gerd Binnig is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope.
Gas cluster ion beams (GCIB) is a technology for nano-scale modification of surfaces. It can smooth a wide variety of surface material types to within an angstrom of roughness without subsurface damage. It is also used to chemically alter surfaces through infusion or deposition.
Ghavam G. Shahidi is an Iranian-American electrical engineer and IBM Fellow. He is the director of Silicon Technology at the IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center. He is best known for his pioneering work in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology since the late 1980s.
FEI Company is an American company that designs, manufactures, and supports microscope technology. Headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon, FEI has over 2,800 employees and sales and service operations in more than 50 countries around the world. Formerly listed on the NASDAQ, it is a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Electron beam ion trap (EBIT) is an electromagnetic bottle that produces and confines highly charged ions. An EBIT uses an electron beam focused with a powerful magnetic field to ionize atoms to high charge states by successive electron impact.
Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) is a "lensless" technique for 2D or 3D reconstruction of the image of nanoscale structures such as nanotubes, nanocrystals, porous nanocrystalline layers, defects, potentially proteins, and more. In CDI, a highly coherent beam of X-rays, electrons or other wavelike particle or photon is incident on an object.
Christoph Gerber is a titular professor at the Department of Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland.
A Wien filter also known as velocity selector is a device consisting of perpendicular electric and magnetic fields that can be used as a velocity filter for charged particles, for example in electron microscopes and spectrometers. It is used in accelerator mass spectrometry to select particles based on their speed. The device is composed of orthogonal electric and magnetic fields, such that particles with the correct speed will be unaffected while other particles will be deflected. It is named for Wilhelm Wien who developed it in 1898 for the study of anode rays. It can be configured as a charged particle energy analyzer, monochromator, or mass spectrometer.
William Thomas Silfvast is an American physicist well known for his contributions to gas discharge lasers, soft x-ray lasers, and as the author of the influential textbook Laser Fundamentals. and also several thriller novels. Silfvast received his PhD in physics from the University of Utah and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. He then spent much of his career at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, with a Guggenheim Fellowship at Stanford in 1982–83. Later he became a professor and chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Central Florida's Center for Research in Electro-Optics and Lasers (CREOL). Silfvast remains a Professor Emeritus at UCF, and is now retired and living in Oregon. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the IEEE. In 2010 Silfvast was selected as one of 27 'Laser Luminaries' during the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the discovery of the laser.
Photo-reflectance is an optical technique for investigating the material and electronic properties of thin films. Photo-reflectance measures the change in reflectivity of a sample in response to the application of an amplitude modulated light beam. In general, a photo-reflectometer consists of an intensity modulated "pump" light beam used to modulate the reflectivity of the sample, a second "probe" light beam used to measure the reflectance of the sample, an optical system for directing the pump and probe beams to the sample, and for directing the reflected probe light onto a photodetector, and a signal processor to record the differential reflectance. The pump light is typically modulated at a known frequency so that a lock-in amplifier may be used to suppress unwanted noise, resulting in the ability to detect reflectance changes at the ppm level.
High Field Consultants was founded in 1993 by J. A. Panitz and provides atom probe expertise to the industry and academia. More specifically, they specialize in analysis, developing techniques from atom scale imaging, and high electric field phenomena investigation.
A probe tip is an instrument used in scanning probe microscopes (SPM) to scan the surface of a sample and make nano-scale images of surfaces and structures. The probe tip is mounted on the end of a cantilever and can be as sharp as a single atom. In microscopy, probe tip geometry and the composition of both the tip and the surface being probed directly affect resolution and imaging quality. Tip size and shape are extremely important in monitoring and detecting interactions between surfaces. SPMs can precisely measure electrostatic forces, magnetic forces, chemical bonding, Van der Waals forces, and capillary forces. SPMs can also reveal the morphology and topography of a surface.
