This award to Stanford University is for the acquisition of a Helios NanoLab 600i dual-beam Focused Ion Beam / Scanning Electron microscope manufactured by the FEI Company. The Helios offers unprecedented capabilities for fabricating and characterizing two- and three-dimensional nanoscale objects. It will enable more than thirty Stanford research groups to address grand challenges in nanoscience and nanotechnology. For example, the Helios will support research efforts to: create plasmonic optical tweezers that can trap single atoms; detect cancer in its earliest stages; create the first integrated circuit that can serve as an efficient source of terahertz radiation; develop organic solar cells with higher efficiency and organic transistors with higher mobility; determine how neurons communicate with each other in the brain; and, elucidate the quantum mechanical phenomena that determine the behavior of topological insulators. The Helios will also enable a broad range of scientists to prepare higher-quality samples for transmission electron microscopy because it prepares lamellae with a low-energy (500 eV) ion beam. As a result, researchers will be able to take full advantage of state-of-the-art aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes that can image samples with sub-Ã…ngstrom resolution.
The Helios will reside within the Stanford Nano Center (SNC), a shared user facility, where external users from corporations, national laboratories, and other academic institutions will have access. In addition, it will be part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network(NNIN). No open laboratory in northern California contains a Focused Ion Beam instrument as advanced as the Helios. Researchers at Stanford will collaborate with the FEI Company to implement full remote control by domestic and international users of the Helios. The Helios will be featured in public outreach events such as Stanford Days and Nanodays, and its capabilities will be shared with minority-serving institutions in an effort to catalyze future collaborations.
The goals of this project were to acquire, install, and develop a world-class dual-beam scanning electron microscope (SEM) and focused ion beam (FIB) workstation. We aimed to develop a system that would have significant scientific and educational impact, both for scientists at Stanford and for the broader community. We purchased a commercial system from FEI, the Helios, in fall 2012. The instrument arrived in late December 2012 and was installed and fully operational by March 2013. The Helios is part of the Stanford Nano Center / Stanford Nanocharacterization Laboratory – a shared facility in the heart of Stanford’s Science and Engineering Quad that includes 9000 net square feet of space devoted to nanofabrication and characterization. We worked with FEI to design an instrument to would serve the largest number of users without sacrificing reliability or ease-of-use. Since its installation, the Helios has been used to create three-dimensional nanostructures with sizes ranging from 2.5 nm to tens of microns via controlled localized ion milling, etching, and ion- and electron-beam deposition. The tunable ion currents and ion voltages have enabled preparation of high-resolution TEM samples and fabrication of high-quality electronic and photonic devices with minimal gallium ion implantation. The Fast Beam Blanker on the tool enables the operator to control the beam with high precision. Our Helios contains a high-precision 5-axis (x-y-z-rotate-tilt) stage. It includes an Omniprobe AutoProbe 200, a fully automated, PC-controlled, closed-loop multi-purpose nano-positioning system capable of in situ lift-out, electrical measurements, and nano-mechanical testing. The advanced Helios patterning system, which includes NanoBuilder and GDStoDB software, has enabled generation of complex features with a maximum pattern size of 8 million pixels. Selective Etch Software enables selective milling of complex shapes based on image contrast. The Helios provides gas injection systems for chemically-assisted etching of materials and for deposition of metals such as tungsten, carbon, platinum, and silica. A cryogenic stage makes it possible to manipulate and mill biological materials and soft materials such as polymers and organic semiconductors. The acquisition of this multidisciplinary research instrument has already impacted the research programs of nearly 20 faculty and staff from the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Applied Physics, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Geological & Environmental Sciences, Pediatrics, Radiology, and the Cell Sciences Imaging Facility. External users from other academic institutions as well as industry can gain access to the Helios to further their research. Current external users include research groups from UC Santa Cruz, NASA/AMES, Foothill College, and the University of Oregon, and we seek to expand this userbase. The Helios has served as a cornerstone educational tool for students at Stanford. Co-PI Sinclair has taught the fundamentals of the Helios in a graduate course, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) 320, Nanocharacterization of Materials. PI Dionne has described the instrument in an undergraduate course, MSE 152, Electronic Materials Engineering and her freshman seminar, MSE 82N, Science of the Impossible. Co-PI Moler is developing lectures to be distributed though Stanford’s Center for Probing the Nanoscale (CPN) to enhance internal and external education. SNC/SNL has also incorporated the Helios into its FEI Collaboratory remote server system. This server has allowed trained remote users on campus to conduct real-time experiments on the Helios, thereby enhancing classroom learning opportunities. We have also developed the Helios as a cornerstone tool for public outreach. Demos and lectures about the Helios have been delivered to high-school students participating in Stanford’s Medical Youth Summer Program (SYMSP), to middle-school students at the Girl’s Middle School, to high-school students at Sacred Heart Preparatory School, and to high-school teachers from economically disadvantaged schools participating in the IISME (Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education) fellows program. Such demos have featured lab tours and hands-on demos of the Helios. Students were particularly excited to witness the "hair trim" of a spider, to observe the periodic structure of butterfly wings giving rise to structural color, and to take home scanning electron micrograph images of nanosized portraits of themselves. Essential to the success of the instrument are staff scientists including Dr. Richard Chin and recently-hired Dr. Juliet Jamtgaard, who have trained and assisted other researchers on the best use of the instrumentation. Operations are managed as a service center and recover all yearly direct costs, such as staff expenses, consumables and service contracts.
