We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The influence of sample temperature on SEM contrast of two types of nanostructures.
- Authors
Zhang, Peng
- Abstract
Currently, researches on scanning electron imaging (SEM) almost are devoted to improve the imaging quality via optimizing variety of controllable experimental parameters but ignore the influence of the ambient temperature. This study explores the sample temperature effect on the SEM contrast for two types of nanostructures by Monte-Carlo simulation. The first one is a series of spherical nanoparticles [multiple gold (Au) nanospheres (Au-NS) with different sizes on the beryllium (Be) substrate]. The relations between two types of captured signals (backscattering electron (BSE) and secondary electron (SE)) with the temperature and the sample size were first investigated. It is concluded that the SEM contrast is quite sensitive to the temperature and the Au-NS size. Specifically, the large Au-NSs present the decrease and increase contrasts with the temperature for the SE and BSE signals, respectively. However, both the SE and BSE contrasts of small Au-NSs decrease with the temperature. This work next investigated the spatial distributions of the deposited electron energy at different values of temperature and Au-NS sizes. In addition, this study also investigated the thermal effect on the SEM contrast for a pitch structure in multi-frame stacking mode. The SEM contrast was found to be sensitive to the number of frames. In general, both the SE and BSE contrasts increase and the shielding effect becomes more obvious during the stacking process compared to the case without the thermal effect. However, the case with the high energy of the primary electron (PE) beam is less affected by thermal effect. The mechanism behind was given systematically. This study potentially provides a possibility of thermometry in nanostructures by SEMs.
- Subjects
ELECTRON backscattering; ELECTRON distribution; MUSICAL pitch; TEMPERATURE effect; MONTE Carlo method; NANOSTRUCTURES; SCANNING electron microscopes
- Publication
Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing, 2024, Vol 130, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
0947-8396
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00339-023-07198-5