Ion Mill Capabilities

Wide Range of Ion Beam Source

While mechanical polishing, cross-sectioning, and chemical etching are suitable for many applications, ion beam milling is the technique we recommend for high-quality sample preparation.

Our ion mill instrumentation has the widest range of accelerating voltage (100 eV – 16 keV ) for the greatest amount of transmitted electrons. This produces wider undistorted cross-sections without applying mechanical stress to your sample.

Other Capabilities

Final Polishing and Cleaning

We utilize dual ion gun Argon (Ar) ion milling instrumentation to properly prepare scratch free sample surfaces for metallurgical and EBSD studies.

Metallurgical Mounting, Ion Mill and SEM

We can perform the full service of mounting, polishing, ion milling and SEM imaging on your samples. Thin films deposited over a substrate can be cross sectioned for direct measurement of the film thickness of tens of layers accurately. Interlayer bonding and diffusion of materials across layers can be identified with the EDS maps of cross sections.

Analysis Performed

Identification of details of device connections, microstructure of joint to reveal any voids, cracks, metal diffusion/migration at interlayer for joint quality.

Sample Preparation Services

• Metallurgical Mounting
• Mechanical Cutting
• Mechanical Polishing
• Ion Milling
• SEM imaging & inspection

Thin films deposited over a substrate can be cross sectioned for direct measurement of the film thickness of tens of layers. Utilizing EDS maps of cross sections, we can identify interlayer bonding and diffusion of materials across layers.