Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:38:49.861Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Removing Beam Current Artifacts in Helium Ion Microscopy: A Comparison of Image Processing Techniques

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2016

Anders J. Barlow Open the ORCID record for Anders J. Barlow [Opens in a new window] ,
Jose F. Portoles ,
Naoko Sano  and
Peter J. Cumpson
Anders J. Barlow*
Affiliation:
National EPSRC XPS Users’ Service (NEXUS), School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU, UK
Jose F. Portoles
Affiliation:
National EPSRC XPS Users’ Service (NEXUS), School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU, UK
Naoko Sano
Affiliation:
National EPSRC XPS Users’ Service (NEXUS), School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU, UK
Peter J. Cumpson
Affiliation:
National EPSRC XPS Users’ Service (NEXUS), School of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU, UK
*
*Corresponding author. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The development of the helium ion microscope (HIM) enables the imaging of both hard, inorganic materials and soft, organic or biological materials. Advantages include outstanding topographical contrast, superior resolution down to <0.5 nm at high magnification, high depth of field, and no need for conductive coatings. The instrument relies on helium atom adsorption and ionization at a cryogenically cooled tip that is atomically sharp. Under ideal conditions this arrangement provides a beam of ions that is stable for days to weeks, with beam currents in the order of picoamperes. Over time, however, this stability is lost as gaseous contamination builds up in the source region, leading to adsorbed atoms of species other than helium, which ultimately results in beam current fluctuations. This manifests itself as horizontal stripe artifacts in HIM images. We investigate post-processing methods to remove these artifacts from HIM images, such as median filtering, Gaussian blurring, fast Fourier transforms, and principal component analysis. We arrive at a simple method for completely removing beam current fluctuation effects from HIM images while maintaining the full integrity of the information within the image.

Keywords

helium ion microscopydestripingFFTPCASVD
Type
Instrumentation and Techniques Development
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , October 2016 , pp. 939 - 947
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bliznyuk, V.N., LaJeunesse, D. & Boseman, A. (2014). Application of helium ion microscopy to nanostructured polymer materials. Nanotechnol Rev 3, 361–387.Google Scholar
Bowen, W.R. & Doneva, T.A. (2000). Artefacts in AFM studies of membranes: Correcting pore images using fast Fourier transform filtering. J Membr Sci 171, 141–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cumpson, P.J., Sano, N., Fletcher, I.W., Portoles, J.F., Bravo-Sanchez, M. & Barlow, A.J. (2015). Multivariate analysis of extremely large ToFSIMS imaging datasets by a rapid PCA method. Surf Interface Anal 47, 986–993.Google Scholar
Halko, N.P., Martinsson, P.G. & Tropp, J.A. (2011). Finding structure with randomness: Probabilistic algorithms for constructing approximate matrix decompositions. SIAM Rev 53, 217–288.Google Scholar
Iberi, V., Ievlev, A.V., Vlassiouk, I., Jesse, S., Kalinin, S.V., Joy, D.C., Rondinone, A.J., Belianinov, A. & Ovchinnikova, O.S. (2016). Graphene engineering by neon ion beams. Nanotechnology 27, 125302–125308.Google Scholar
Joens, M.S., Huynh, C., Kasuboski, J.M., Ferranti, D., Sigal, Y.J., Zeitvogel, F., Obst, M., Burkhardt, C.J., Curran, K.P, Chalasani, S.H., Stern, L.A., Goetze, B. & Fitzpatrick, J.A.J. (2013). Helium ion microscopy (HIM) for the imaging of biological samples at sub-nanometer resolution. Sci Rep 3, 3514.Google Scholar
Joy, D.C. & Griffin, B.J. (2011). Is microanalysis possible in the helium ion microscope? Microsc Microanal 17, 643–649.Google Scholar
Loretto, M.H. (1994). Electron Beam Analysis of Materials. London, UK: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Morgan, J., Notte, J., Hill, R. & Ward, B. (2006). An introduction to the helium ion microscope. Microsc Today 14, 24–31.Google Scholar
Postek, M.T., Vladar, A.E. & Bin, M. (2009). Recent progress in understanding the imaging and metrology using the helium ion microscope. Proc SPIE Int Soc Opt Eng 7378, 737808–737810.Google Scholar
Prats-Montalbán, J.M., de Juan, A. & Ferrer, A. (2011). Multivariate image analysis: A review with applications. Chemometr Intell Lab Syst 107, 1–23.Google Scholar
Rahman, F.F., Notte, J.A., Livengood, R.H. & Tan, S. (2013). Observation of synchronized atomic motions in the field ion microscope. Ultramicroscopy 126, 10–18.Google Scholar
Schneider, C.A., Rasband, W.S. & Eliceiri, K.W. (2012). NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nat Methods 9, 671–675.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsai, F. & Chen, W.W. (2008). Striping noise detection and correction of remote sensing images. IEEE Trans Geosci Rem Sens 46, 4122–4131.Google Scholar
Ward, B.W., Notte, J.A. & Economou, N.P. (2006). Helium ion microscope: A new tool for nanoscale microscopy and metrology. J Vac Sci Technol B 24, 2871–2874.Google Scholar