This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop, demonstrate, and characterize a high-resolution, highly efficient instrument for imaging elemental distributions. Atom Sciences, Inc. has designated this device as a sputter-initiated resonance ionization nanoprobe (SIRINP) instrument. The unique features of SIRINP are necessary to meet the needs of the electronics and optoelectronics fields as higher performance, higher speed devices continue to evolve. Advances in these fields to date have been expedited by improvements in the performance of analytical instrumentation used to characterize the composition and structure of devices under development. These successes encourage the expectation that still higher performance devices will become available, but the concomitant reduction in semiconductor device dimension and increases in materials purity and compositional fidelity are straining available characterization techniques. Successful completion of the proposed new instrument will make it possible to quantify the spatial distribution of atomic species in electronic and optoelectronic devices, optical fibers, biological specimens, environmental and other samples, to sub-parts-per-million concentration levels with high sensitivity, efficiency, analysis speed, and lateral resolution approaching 50 nm using a Ga ion probe. In Phase I, they will (a) determine the SIRINP imaging capabilities on electronic materials relevant to the semiconductor research community: (b) determine lateral resolution, sensitivity, efficiency, analysis time, and depth resolution possible with SIRINP, and (c) define instrumental modifications required to optimize the SIRINP technique for routine high-resolution imaging analysis. In Phase II they will optimize efficiency, analysis time, and spatial and mass resolution for analytical research. Phase II will result in a full prototype SIRINP instrument. In Phase III, SIRINP analyses and instrument will be made available for the analytical community.
