Beam induced deposition of platinum using a helium ion microscope

Helium ion microscopy is now a demonstrated practical technology that possesses the resolution and beam currents necessary to perform nanofabrication tasks, such as circuit edit applications. Due to helium's electrical properties and sample interaction characteristics relative to gallium, it is likely that the properties and deposition characteristics of beam induced deposited films will be different than those produced using gallium focused ion beam technology. However, there is at this date very little literature discussing the use of helium beams for beam induced chemistry or characterization of the resulting films. In this article, the authors present initial results regarding the deposition of platinum using a helium ion microscope and a gaseous organometallic precursor. Within this work a Carl Zeiss ORION (TM) helium ion microscope was used along with an OmniGIS unit to deposit platinum while exploring a variety of controllable parameters such as beam current, beam overlap, and size of deposition.