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International audience; Secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is probably the most widely used chemical analysis technique in semiconductor science and in metallurgy because of its ultimate sensitivity to all elements and in particular to light elements providing semiquantitative information on the depth distribution of elements, for instance, doping elements (i.e., B, H), contaminants (i.e., C and O), chemical gradients, and segregation in thin films and at interfaces, etc. With the size shrinking of systems, high-resolution 3D chemical imaging is becoming a prerequisite for the development of new materials at the nanoscale and for the deep understanding of the correlation between their properties and functionalities. Herein, the development of an innovative analytical SIMS implemented in a focused ion beam (FIB) (using Ga source)/scanning electron microscope (SEM) is reported. The equipment enables to give elemental chemical mapping at very high resolution (

The focused ion beam (FIB) market is expected to grow from $820 million in 2019 to $1,185 million in 2024 and is already a well-known technology for electronics and semiconductor industry, materials science and it becomes more and more present in life sciences area.

International audience; The PELIICAEN (Platform for the Study of Ion Implantation Controlled and Analyzed at the Nanometric Scale) setup is a unique device, both for all of its in situ ultra-high vacuum equipment (focused ion beams (FIB) column, Secondary Electron Microscope (SEM), Atomic Force and Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (AFM/STM)), and for its nanostructuration performances on material. The setup has been recently equipped with its own electron cyclotron resonance ion sources, a new position-controlled platform using pneumatic vibration insulators and a fast pulsing device. Its performances were then deeply improved, providing access to a large choice of ions, an adjustable ion implantation depth up to few hundreds of nanometres, an image resolution down to 25 nm and an ion beam size on sample down to 100 nm. With all these equipment, the PELIICAEN setup is in the international foreground to perform and analyse ion implantation and surface modification.

Capillary-driven mass transport in solids is typically understood in terms of surface-diffusion limited kinetics, leading to conventional solid-state dewetting of thin films. However, another mass transport mechanism, so-called surface-attachment and detachment limited kinetics, is possible. It can shrink a solid film, preserving its original topology without breaking it in isolated islands, and leads to faster dynamics for smaller film curvature in contrast with the opposite behavior observed for surface-diffusion limited kinetics. In this work, we present a rimless dewetting regime for Si, which is ascribed to effective attachment-limited kinetics mediated by the coexistence of crystalline and amorphous Si phases. Phase-field numerical simulations quantitatively reproduce the experimental observations, assessing the main mass transport mechanism at play. The process can be exploited to obtain in a deterministic fashion monocrystalline islands (with 95% probability) pinned at ≈500 nm from a hole milled within closed patches.

Capillary-driven mass transport in solids is typically understood in terms of surface-diffusion limited kinetics, leading to conventional solid-state dewetting of thin films. However, another mass transport mechanism, so-called surface-attachment/detachment limited kinetics, is possible. It can shrink a solid film, preserving its original topology without breaking it in isolated islands, and leads to faster dynamics for smaller film curvature in contrast with the opposite behavior observed for surface-diffusion limited kinetics. In this work, we present a rimless dewetting regime for Si, which is ascribed to effective attachment-limited kinetics mediated by the coexistence of crystalline and amorphous Si phases. Phase-field numerical simulations quantitatively reproduce the experimental observations, assessing the main mass transport mechanism at play. The process can be exploited to obtain in a deterministic fashion monocrystalline islands (with $95%$ probability) pinned at $\ensuremath{\approx}500$ nm from a hole milled within closed patches.