An ion milling apparatus has: a sample holder including a shield member for shielding the sample except for a portion to be milled; and a sample locking member cooperating with the shield member such that the sample is sandwiched and held therebetween. The shield member has an edge portion that determines a milling position on or in the sample. The sample locking member is disposed downstream of the edge portion in the direction of irradiation by the ion beam and has a support portion cooperating with the edge portion to support the milled portion therebetween. The support portion has a first surface making contact with the sample and a second surface making a given angle to the first surface. The given angle is equal to or less than 90°.

Provided is an ion beam processing apparatus including an ion generation chamber, a processing chamber, and electrodes to form an ion beam by extracting ions generated in the ion generation chamber to the processing chamber. The electrodes includes a first electrode disposed close to the ion generation chamber and provided with an ion passage hole to allow passage of the ions, and a second electrode disposed adjacent to the first electrode and closer to the processing chamber than the first electrode is, and provided with an ion passage hole to allow passage of the ions. The apparatus also includes a power unit which applies different electric potentials to the first electrode and the second electrode, respectively, so as to accelerate the ions generated by an ion generator in the ion generation chamber. A material of the first electrode is different from a material of the second electrode.

Embodiments described herein relate to methods of forming gratings with different slant angles on a substrate and forming gratings with different slant angles on successive substrates using angled etch systems. The methods include positioning portions of substrates retained on a platen in a path of an ion beam. The substrates have a grating material disposed thereon. The ion beam is configured to contact the grating material at an ion beam angle relative to a surface normal of the substrates and form gratings in the grating material. The substrates are rotated about an axis of the platen resulting in rotation angles ϕ between the ion beam and a surface normal of the gratings. The gratings have slant angles relative to the surface normal of the substrates. The rotation angles ϕ selected by an equation ϕ=cos.sup.−1 (tan()/tan()).

Provided is an ion gun that is capable of obtaining a higher plasma efficiency. This ion gun comprises: a first cathode 21 that is formed in a disc shape; a second cathode 12 that is formed in a disc shape and has an ion beam extraction hole 101a provided thereto; a first permanent magnet 14 that is disposed between the first cathode and the second cathode, and that is formed in a cylindrical shape; an anode 23 that has a cylindrical region 35a and an extending region 25a provided to one end of the cylindrical region; and an insulating material 26 that keeps the anode electrically insulated from the first cathode, the second cathode, and the first permanent magnet, all of which are electrically connected. The cylindrical region of the anode is disposed inside the inner diametrical position of the first permanent magnet, and the extending region of the anode is disposed so as to cross over the inner diametrical position of the first permanent magnet and to face the first cathode.

The invention provides an ion milling device capable of cross-sectional milling on an all-solid-state battery while reducing an occurrence of a short circuit due to a redeposition film. The ion milling device includes a sample stage 5 on which a sample 8 is placed, an ion source 1 configured to emit an unfocused ion beam 4 toward the sample, a stage controller 6 configured to cause the sample stage to perform a swing operation centered on a swing axis S.sub.0 set to be orthogonal to an ion beam center B.sub.0 of the ion beam, and cause the sample stage to perform a sliding operation along a line of intersection between a plane (YZ plane) including the ion beam center and perpendicularly intersecting the swing axis and a sample placement surface of the sample stage, in which the stage controller causes, in a first mode operation, the sample stage to perform the swing operation and the ion source to emit the ion beam to mill the sample, and causes in a second mode operation, the sample stage to perform the sliding operation and the ion source to emit the ion beam to remove sputter particles adhered again to the sample in the first mode operation.

A sample milling apparatus includes an ion source, a swinging mechanism for swinging a sample, a positioning camera for bringing a target milling position on the sample into coincidence with the impact point of an ion beam, and a display section for displaying an image captured by the positioning camera. The adjustment method starts with observing the trace of the impinging ion beam left on the sample with the positioning camera while the position of the positioning camera is held relative to the swing axis of the swinging mechanism and capturing an observation image. Then, a display image to be displayed on the display section is extracted from the observation image based on the position of the trace, thus bringing the beam impact point and the position of the field of view of the display image into coincidence.

A charged particle beam source for a surface processing apparatus is disclosed. The charged particle beam source comprises: a plasma chamber; a plasma generation unit adapted to convert an input gas within the plasma chamber into a plasma containing charged particles; and a grid assembly adjacent an opening of the plasma chamber. The grid assembly comprises one or more grids each having a plurality of apertures therethrough, the one or more grids being electrically biased in use so as to accelerate charged particles from the plasma through the grid(s) to thereby output a charged particle beam, the major axis of which is substantially perpendicular to the plane of the grid assembly. The transmissivity of the or each grid to the charged particles is defined by the relative proportion of aperture area to non-aperture area, and at least one of the grids has a transmissivity which varies across the grid along a first direction, the transmissivity being lower adjacent a first extremity of the grid than adjacent a second extremity of the grid opposite the first extremity, the first direction lying parallel to the plane of the grid assembly, such that in use the charged particle beam output by the source has a non-uniform charged particle current density profile in a plane parallel to the plane of the grid assembly which varies along the first direction, the charged particle current density being lower adjacent a first edge of the beam than adjacent a second edge of the beam opposite the first edge.

Apparatus for a multi-source ion beam etching (IBE) system are provided herein. In some embodiments, a multi-source IBE system includes a multi-source lid comprising a multi-source adaptor and a lower chamber adaptor, a plurality of IBE sources coupled to the multi-source adaptor, a rotary shield assembly coupled to a shield motor mechanism configured to rotate the rotary shield, wherein the shield motor mechanism is coupled to a top portion of the multi-source lid, and wherein the rotary shield includes a body that has one IBE source opening formed through the body, and at least one beam conduit that engages the one IBE source opening in the rotary shield on one end, and engages the bottom portion of the IBE sources on the opposite end of the beam conduit.

A system and method for etching workpieces in a uniform manner are disclosed. The system includes a semiconductor processing system that generates a ribbon ion beam, and a workpiece holder that scans the workpiece through the ribbon ion beam. The workpiece holder includes a portion that extends beyond the workpiece, referred to as a halo. The halo may be independently heated to compensate for etch rate non-uniformities. In some embodiments, the halo may be independently biased such that its potential is different from the potential applied to the workpiece. In certain embodiments, the halo may be divided into a plurality of thermal zones that can be separately controlled. In this way, various etch rate non-uniformities may be addressed by controlling the potential and/or temperature of the various thermal zones of the halo.

A system and method for the precise and uniform material removal or delayering of a large area of a sample is provided. The size of the milled area is controllable, ranging from sub-millimeter to multi-millimeter scale and the depth resolution is controllable on the nanometer scale. A controlled singularly charged ion beam is scanned across the sample surface in such a manner to normalize the ion density distribution from the sample center toward the periphery to realize uniform delayering.