The EBID fabrication technology:

The EBID technology is using one of the finest tools we have at present: the electron beam of a scanning electron microscope. Using this electron beam as production means we are able to generate the smallest nanostructures available today in an extraordinary controllable manner.

EBID (electron beam induced processing) is the kind of focused electron beam induced processes (FEBIP) which is adding material to a substrate surface. EBID uses the focused beam of a scanning electron micorscope to disintegrate the molecules of a gaseous compound exactly at the point where the electron beam is landing on the substrate surface. The disintegrated compound products build up nanometer sized structures at that beam landing position. By controlled movement of the beam position nearly any shape of nanostructure can be generated.

These field emission tips can be generated on a variety of preformed extraction structures, e .g. on top of metallic micrometer sized needle tips, or in micrometer sized extraction openings. Operating voltages are orders of magnitude smaller compared to conventional cold field emitters, making it ideally suited for application in miniaturized electron microscopes. Typical extraction voltage is between 100 V and 200 V. We produce the extraction structures with electron beam lithography with the same instrument which we use for the EBID process to guarantee highest precision.

Main application of this technology in our company is to build cold electron field emitters as electron source for electron microscopes. Having tip radii of curvature of about 10 nanometers, these emitters are point-like electron sources offering electron field emission at very low voltages, resulting in an electron beam of extremely high brightness. Using such an electron beam as primary beam in an electron microscope enhances resolution of the instrument up to the the theoretical limit.

nanoelectrotec - the combination of nanostructuration and vacuum electronics