Focused ion beam milling and femtosecond laser ablation
Thermo Scientific Helios 5 PFIB Laser Systems combine plasma focused ion beam milling with femtosecond laser ablation and SEM (scanning electron microscopy) imaging. This “TriBeam” combination enables high-resolution imaging and analysis with in situ ablation capability, offering unprecedented material removal rates for fast millimeter-scale characterization at nanometer resolution.
The femtosecond laser can cut many materials at rates that are orders of magnitude faster than a typical FIB. A large cross-section (hundreds of micrometers) can be created in less than five minutes. Because the laser has a different removal mechanism (ablation versus the ion sputtering of FIB), it can easily process challenging materials, such as non-conductive or ion-beam-sensitive samples.
The extremely short duration of the femtosecond laser pulses introduces almost no artifacts such as heat impact, microcracking, melting, or those typical of traditional mechanical polishing. In most cases, the laser-milled surfaces are clean enough for direct SEM imaging and even for surface-sensitive techniques such as electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) mapping.
We offer a broad product portfolio and advanced automation capabilities for applications such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM) sample preparation, atom probe tomography (APT) sample preparation, and 3D structural analysis.