Section 2 Focused Ion Beam

**68**

*Ion Beam Techniques and Applications*

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focused [14–17].

**Chapter 5**

**Abstract**

*and Saima Q. Memon*

Focused Ion Beam Tomography

To study the fundamental effect of shape and morphology of any material on its properties, it is very essential to know and study its morphology. Focused ion beam (FIB) tomography is a 3D chemical and structural relationship studying technique. The instrumentation of FIB looks like that of the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), but there is a major difference in the beam used for scanning. For SEM, a beam of electrons is used with scanning medium whereas in FIB, a much focused beam of ions is used for scanning. FIB can be used for lithography and ablation purposes, but due to advancements and high-energy focused beam, it is nowadays being used as a tomographic technique. Tomography is defined as imaging by sectoring or cross-sectioning any desired area. The hyphenation of FIB with energydispersive spectrometry or secondary ion mass spectrometry can give us elemental analysis with very high-resolution 3D images for a sample. This technique contributes to acquaintance of qualitative and quantitative analyses, 3D volume creations, and image processing. In this chapter, we will discuss the advancements in FIB instrumentation and its use as 3D imaging tool for different samples ranging from nanometer (nm)-sized materials to micrometer (μm)-sized biological samples.

*Dilawar Hassan, Sidra Amin, Amber Rehana Solangi* 

**Keywords:** focused ion beam, scanning electron microscopy, FIB-SEM,

With the evolution in science and technology, the need for latest equipment is getting powered up with every passing day. At first, the light microscopes were employed to watch micro objects which naked human eye cannot see. Later, with the need for higher resolution imaging instruments, electron microscopes were introduced, which gave much clearer and highly resolved 2D images [1–3]. Usually, stereological rules were used to produce 3D characteristics in micrographs of 2D sections [4–8]. This method of production, however, was not able to produce 3D images for objects with complex structures [9]. To be able to see the 3D models of even complex structures, many new techniques were introduced [10]. In the early stage, synchrotron and X-ray based tomographic techniques were introduced for 3D analysis of sample [11, 12]. Both of these are transmission techniques whereas the X-ray transmission technique uses the absorption difference between different phases of the samples and reconstructs a 3D image of the object [13]. Focused ion beam (FIB) is one of the 3D imaging techniques going head-to-head with confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). The major difference between these two is that the CLSM uses LASER for scanning purposes whereas the FIB uses extremely

FIB biological sample, FIB characterization

**1. Introduction**
