It is shown that a xenon plasma focused ion beam (FIB) microscope is an excellent tool for high-quality preparation of functional oxide thin films for atomic resolution electron microscopy. Samples may be prepared rapidly, at least as fast as those prepared using conventional gallium FIB. Moreover, the surface quality after 2 kV final polishing with the Xe beam is exceptional with only about 3 nm of amorphized surface present. The sample quality was of a suitably high quality to allow atomic resolution high-angle annular dark field imaging and integrated differential phase contrast without any further preparation, and the resulting images were good enough for quantitative evaluation of atomic positions to reveal the oxygen octahedral tilt pattern. This suggests that such xenon plasma FIB instruments may find widespread application in transmission electron microscope and scanning transmission electron microscope specimen preparation.
