Fibics Incorporated is a world leader in applications of FIB to Materials Science. We'd be very happy to discuss your requirements, and how FIB can play a valuable part in the characterization of your materials science specimens. Contact us if you have any questions about how FIB can contribute to the characterization of your materials science specimens.

If you are looking for a general introduction to FIB, please visit the Introduction: Focused Ion Beam Systems page of our website.

At higher beam currents, the FIB microscope can be thought of as an "atomic scale milling machine" to perform stress-free precision sectioning with sub-micron positional accuracy. This precise milling can also be used for precision micromachining on a scale from tens of millimeters to tens of nanometers.

At lower beam currents, FIB imaging resolution begins to rival the more familiar scanning electron microscope (SEM) in terms of imaging topography, however the FIB's two imaging modes, using secondary electrons and secondary ions, both produced by the primary ion beam, offer many advantages over SEM.

FIB secondary electron images show intense grain orientation contrast . As a result grain morphology can be readily imaged without resorting to chemical etching. Grain boundary contrast can also be enhanced through careful selection of imaging parameters.

FIB secondary ion images reveal chemical differences, and are especially useful in corrosion studies, as secondary ion yields of metals can increase by three orders of magnitude in the presence of oxygen, clearly revealing the presence of corrosion.

Sectioning and imaging can be readily used to examine fragile and/or challenging materials science specimens that would otherwise be extremely difficult to investigate. One can even prepare site-specific TEM samples with one-to-one correlation between TEM image and FIB image.

Our FIB Applications page illustrates many examples of the use of FIB in Materials Science.

A more detailed overview of this subject can be found in our short paper, "THE HIGH RESOLUTION FOCUSED ION BEAM MICROSCOPE: THE LATEST "WORKHORSE" INSTRUMENT IN MATERIALS ANALYSIS?" (PDF format).