Zs. Radi^*, K. Havancsák^**, Sz. Kalácska^**, A. Baris**,

* Technoorg-Linda Ltd.

1044 Budapest, Ipari Park utca 10.

** Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Science

1117 Budapest, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A.

Abstract

For the large majority of materials science studies a good quality surface is extremely important. Especially it is of great importance in the case of EBSD sample preparation where the information depth is as shallow as some tens of nanometres and this is the reason why it requires a damage- and oxide-free surface. The SC-1000 SEMPrep dual Ar beam (1 keV and 10 keV) milling apparatus developed by the Technoorg-Linda Ltd, Hungary, is suitable for both the surface polishing and slope cutting of the sample, preparing high quality surfaces. These surfaces allow several types of SEM investigations including the surface sensitive EBSD measurements. The present paper demonstrates the operation principle of the SC-1000 SEMPrep apparatus and its outstanding abilities. Here we present Ar ion polishing of different conductive and non-conductive materials followed by high resolution EBSD measurements. The average image quality (IQ) number of the Kikuchi patterns has been shown as a function of polishing angle and time in order to find the optimal polishing conditions. It has been shown that using the optimal operation parameters high quality surfaces can be attained on different metallic and non-metallic materials.

Published in:

2014 International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Adelaide, SA

DOI: 10.1109/ICONN.2014.6965245