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Microplasmas can be used for a wide range of technological applications and to improve our understanding of fundamental physics. Scanning electron microscopy, on the other hand, provides insights into the sample morphology and chemistry of materials from the mm-down to the nm-scale. Combining both would provide direct insight into plasma-sample interactions in real-time and at high spatial resolution. Up till now, very few attempts in this direction have been made, and significant challenges remain. This work presents a stable direct current glow discharge microplasma setup built inside a scanning electron microscope. The experimental setup is capable of real-time in-situ imaging of the sample evolution during plasma operation and it demonstrates localized sputtering and sample oxidation. Further, the experimental parameters such as varying gas mixtures, electrode polarity, and field strength are explored and experimental $V$-$I$ curves under various conditions are provided. These results demonstrate the capabilities of this setup in potential investigations of plasma physics, plasma-surface interactions, and materials science and its practical applications. The presented setup shows the potential to have several technological applications, e.g., to locally modify the sample surface (e.g., local oxidation and ion implantation for nanotechnology applications) on the $\mu$m-scale., Comment: LG, DC, and RDM contributed equally to this work. The videos mentioned in the manuscript can be found in the Zenodo repository linked in the paper

Coulomb blockade is a fundamental phenomenon in physics enabling transfer of individual electrons one by one into electrically isolated nanostructures such as nanowires or quantum dots and thereby creation of sources of single electrons. Nowadays, solid-state single-electron sources are key elements of the emerging new technologies of quantum information processing and single-electron electronics. Moreover, advanced research in free-electron quantum optics and developments in electron microscopy require the point sources of free electrons in vacuum, which can be controlled on a single electron level. However, up to now, single-electron vacuum guns were not realized in practice. The problems to be solved include the formation of stable tip-shaped heterostructured emitters and control of liberated electrons in time and energy domain. Here we overcome these challenges by creating a field emission (FE) electron source based on a carbon nanowire coupled to an ultra-sharp diamond tip by a tunnel junction. Using energy spectroscopy, we directly observe Coulomb oscillations of the electron Fermi level in the nanowire at room temperature and FE currents up to 1 $\mu$A. We reveal that the oscillations are suppressed at high FE current either by Joule heating or due to the high tunneling resistance, depending on the nanowire charging time, ranging from about 25 fs to 1 ps. We anticipate that the combination of introduced carbon single-electron sources with laser-induced gating is highly promising for the creation of coherent ultrashort free-electron bunches of interest for low-energy electron holography and ultrafast electron or X-ray imaging and spectroscopy., Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures

Phase formation and transitions in platinum silicide films on polycrystalline Si in the process of Pt magnetron sputtering and heat treatments at different temperatures are studied using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffractometry. Phases of amorphous and polycrystalline Pt$_3$Si and Pt$_2$Si are shown to form during the room-temperature Pt deposition on poly-Si beneath the Pt layer. The relaxation of the interfacial film and partial transformation of Pt$_3$Si into Pt$_2$Si occurs as a result of the thermal treatment for 30 minutes in the temperature range from 125 to 300$^{\circ}$C. The Pt$_3$Si and Pt$_2$Si phases crystallize to PtSi due to annealing at the temperatures from 320 to 480$^{\circ}$C for the same time period., Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables