Last updated [[2024-10-20]] # Sanchez Special NanoLab Dual Beam - Based on the FEI Company XT platform - Runs on Windows XP - Put together with parts from who knows how many systems - Its not really one model or another, but the software thinks its a NanoLab so we are going with that - Notice the special green frame, this was some kind of prototype system - When he got it it looked like this: - ![[1FA21E9F-9EAE-4600-9C1C-F40A3CEE0243_1_105_c.jpeg|grid]]![[30A54EFA-64E5-43FA-817D-7E10CE8EC06E_1_105_c.jpeg|grid]] - After a while it started to look like this: - ![[8A241C52-F194-467F-8371-8EC573467646_1_105_c.jpeg|grid]]![[B466A414-2A79-4EBB-8E62-FC523147FE00_1_105_c.jpeg|grid]] - Now it looks like this - ![[Pasted image 20240504193442.jpg|grid]]![[Pasted image 20240504193513.jpg|grid]] ## Observations and plans to address them With very helpful hints and advice from David Fisher at [[Superior Technical Services]] ## General - [ ] Scroll pump sounds very loud - [ ] System does not fully vent when vented - VV and TVV are not showing as opening when venting. NAV is open though - It could be that we need to increase the purge time - Getting some state machine errors around TMP not being stopped - 'The TMP cannot stop in given time' - It then goes into error handling after this. - It then seems to restart the vent cycle - Then when it a few seconds later gets to the TMP cannot be stopped error it moves onto a new state machine error - Seems like it tries to do this 3 times - With the vent time increased temporarily in software it does eventually vent. Not sure how given it think VV and TVV are closed... Maybe those valves are not present? - The turbo vent valves are connected to the turbo controller. Not sure if that is normal for this system or not - [ ] E and I beams do not point at the same spot - [ ] Stage uecentric alignment is not good - [x] AVA and Motion did not connect to server after restarting software - Green lights on both controllers after the re-booted (they run windows NT internally!) - Loose ethernet cable on back of PC, plugged in and they showed up immediately. - [ ] Navigating via double click is not calibrated - [ ] Some stage tilt angles result in significant changes in image brightness - Could be a stage grounding problem? - [x] Substantial vibration in SEM image, even more in FIB image - Cutting off water flow eliminates it - Cutting of water flow shuts down the UHR lens power supply - Erik found that unplugging the UHR supply eliminated the noise - The UHR supply should only be for the e-beam? - Seems like the issue is in the AC side of the power supply - If the supply is run off of 110vac it does not cause the noise problems? - Erik remembered that when the system came to him the supply was set to a 110vac input instead of a 220vac input. The power distribution inside of the scope is all 220vac. - [?] Lost e-beam emission when turning the chamber camera on? - No apparent parameter changes - Restarting gun did not recover it - Restarting software did not recover it - Restarting PC did not recover it - Putting microscope into standby then taking it back out got emission back - Again no apparent parameter changes, but the source has emission now - Can not reproduce ## Ion Beam - [ ] Beam currents are all over the place - Could be L1/L2 settings - Could be multi hole aperture alignment - It seems that the aperture table is all over the place. Will need to go though and find all the actual aperture posistions - [ ] Some apertures have very high beam shifts ## Electron Beam - [ ] Stigmators at far end of adjustment range - Looks like there is contamination in the objective. Its visible when zoomed out (Top of image). - At low KV one of the spots of the heaviest contamination is causing visible charging distortion - At higher kv this spot does not cause distortion - ![[Pasted image 20241020195406.jpg|600]] - We can probably clean this just via a sticky swab, other wise we may need to drop the poll piece. - Vented chamber and ran around inside of poll piece with sticky swab - Was not able to fully remove the contamination - [ ] 45° image stretch - These are supposed to be somewhat round gold/tin on carbon - ![[Pasted image 20241020191340.jpg|500]] - Is intermittent - Seems to go away after changing magnification, at least on [[2024-10-20]] when I saw it. It has been seen before and apparently did not go away. - Can watch it go in and out of stretching over the timescale of several seconds, sometimes it stays in the stretched state for minutes. - The stretch does rotate with scan rotation, indicating that the stretch is happening before the scan rotation circuit - [x] Pressure bursts on E-Gun when changing spot size - Could be breakdown in the module - This shows the same symptom as [[Coulomb Tube]] outgassing - Usually on a system that has been around for years stably running you can "trust" that the Coulomb Tube is clean - Given gun section was open for such a long time column tube is more suspect - Could be [[Coulomb Tube]]contamination - Given the column was open for years with no emitter section this is highly suspect. - Start at 10kV acceleration with C1 at 1300 - Slowly drop to acceleration to 1kv (unless using 500V, the drop to 500v. Do not use at 100v) - 100v increments - Keep vacuum better than 5x-9 - Could take hours to run - Raise C1 100V at a time to 4000, again keeping vacuum good - Vac will get bad as you get close to 4000, but condenser does not go above ~2500 during normal operation so this is ok - Beam will sweep entire tube during ramp up and down, going to 4000 beam showers the parts of the tube that only get irradiated during startup/shutdown during normal operation. - [ ] SEM beam currents are all over the place - Need to do condenser calibration with faraday cup - [ ] WD alignment appears to be off - [x] Source has not been high voltage conditioned - Started high voltage conditioning - At 28kV got an FGSU com error? - No pressure spike in gun associated with it... - Was able to turn HV back on and got good readback - Turned back on at 25kV, heard either a relay or discharge... - Lost FGSU coms again... - Turned back on at 20kV - HV and Tolal current stable at 20.2 and 53.5 respectively - 23kv, 23.2ua and 61.5ua - So turns out the SF6 pressure interlock is not connected, and when I measured across the switch it was open, indicating low pressure in the gun cap - Turns out the gun cap is at atmosphere, so there is a leak... - Popped the cap off, found a lot of fibers on the oring and a scratch in the oring groove - used a very fine sandpaper to take care of the scratch - Cleaned off the oring and reinstalled the gun cap - Setup the SF6 pump-purge manifold. Did 6 nitrogen pump purge cycles then filled to 30psi sf6 - Restarting HV conditioning at 10kv, ramping at 1kv per 30 seconds, then when at 30kv ramping at 500v per 30 seconds - Left at 34kV for 30 minutes - ![[Pasted image 20241023205858.png|400]] - [ ] Column mechanical alignment needs to be done - Do 1st mechanical to gety 30kv spot 7 beam on opticl axis with source tilt and shift 0 - Do condenser calibration adj 21 for all spots - Adjust the C1 voltage so that it is the smallest spot - Get it to be round (ideally) most symmetrical and uniform contrast - Iterate back and forth between these to - Then do second mechanical (1kV) - Move second adj screws to get crossover over the 1st crossover - Final aperture - Minimize the image motion with final aperture at 30kv spot 3 - find feature, click intermedate mode move feature back to center - Go until you are withing 10um intermate on and off - The go back and do first second and 3rd again ## [[2024-10-20]] unable to start electron source - came in to see how system was doing - Tried to start up e-beam, unable to - GunFegStateMachine - either filament current or extractor voltage is 0. - Went to TstEGun operate parameters, the filament and the extractor were both set to zero - This is strange, but is why it is unable to start the source. Not sure how the values got set to zero. - Set filament to 2.430 per sticker on the modeul - Do not know what to set the extractor to, will have to ramp that up myself. Will target ~7.0 µA of coulomb tube current. CT current is measured at 5kV spot 3. - I am not sure if the condenser calibration has been carried out yet, so my spot 3 value might be somewhat off... - at 1000v ext getting 8.0 uA emission - 2000v ext getting 26uA emission - Turned beam on 5kv spot 3 (C1 of 1465v) - Got .3uA CT current - Very low, going into service mode to keep ramping Extaxtor manually - Have to set C1 manually as well - 3150v ext, 86ua emission, 1.1ua CT current - 4500v ext, 184ua emission 6.8uA CT current - Set new values in operate parameters - Returned FGSU state to operate from service - ![[Pasted image 20241020141612.jpg|400]] - ![[Pasted image 20241020141628.jpg|400]] - Getting some pressure bursts, starting a round of CT conditioning ## [[2024-10-20]] CT Conitoning - Starting at 5kV acc 1465 C1 - Starting pressure 1.49e-9 mbar - Ramping kv down keeping current C1 - Got to 100V with no pressure spikes - increasing C1 voltage now - At 2400 C1 started getting a rise in pressure to 1.83e-9mbar - At 2500 C1 pressure rose to 1.98e-9 - at 2700 C1 pressure at 2.53e-9 - at 3000 C1 pressure at 3.01e-9 - at 3200 c1 pressure at 3.31e-9 - Pressure did not increase from 3200 to 3800 - at 4000 c1 pressure at 3.79e-9 - All things considered this is pretty good for CT outgassing. - Will let set here for some time (current time 2:37pm) - Pressure falling slightly after about an hour - at 5:10 pm pressure at 2.85e-9 - Stopped beam shower - At 5kv spot 3 pressure at 2.09e-9, higher than when we started but its probably still outgassing - Turned beam "off", pressure rose to 3.01e-9 - this just means not accelerating voltage, extractor and filament heat are still on ### [[2024-10-23]] - At 20kv, went from spot 2 to spot 4 and beam went off on an overpressure - ![[Pasted image 20241023151950.png|600]] - Going to manually drop C1 values to see where the bad spot is - Starting at 2700 and working my way down - Went down to zero and did not get pressure burst - Change spots sizes a bunch more and was unable to replicate - Spot size to C1 values are all over the map, going up and down as we go through different kVs. - Noticed that at spot 6 (9.5nA) image would start out bright then get dark - While in spot 6 went into crossover mode - Massive pressure spike, also for an instant before it shut off the crossover looked very caustic - ![[Pasted image 20241023152401.png|600]] - Going into crossover and ramping down C1 values, starting at 2700 - At 1400 started to get a bright edge to the crossover image - ![[Pasted image 20241023152725.png|600]] - At 1350 started to get a moderate pressure spike, going to have to take this one slowly - 1370, little bit more on the way to a caustic - ![[Pasted image 20241023152929.png|600]] - Got to 1350 slowly with out a pressure spike? - ![[Pasted image 20241023153513.png|600]] - 1315 - ![[Pasted image 20241023153554.png|600]] - 1310 - ![[Pasted image 20241023153613.png|600]] - 1300 - ![[Pasted image 20241023153652.png|600]] - Ramped slowly though down to 1200, never got a pressure spike... - Back to 1350 with the crossover more centered, no pressure spike - Took the beam to the edge of the column using source tilt, and was able to get pressure to spike when I had the beam in the lower right corner. Only one time tough and only for a sec, could not reproduce after that - Went out of service mode and back to spot 6 9.5 ua, started moving beam around and got a spike again... ## [[2024-10-20]] Unable to home/control stage or AVA - Unable to home/control stage. Getting a unable to read registry value relating to stage touch alarm error. - ![[Pasted image 20241020172107.jpg|400]] - Restarting microscope software and control PC - Also unable to move AVA. When selecting a different spot size for FIB it does not move the aperture, and all of what would normally be the different beam current options are greyed out. - After restarting PC and software able to home stage. This is the second restart today so it really should have been fine... ## Mechanic Chamber/Stage/E-Beam/I-Beam Alignment - Stage is not adjusted properly - Need to move the stage left or right - WD calibration or stage height is not proper - Need to get stage 5.0mm WD calibrated via various methods ==Setting this distance involves very carefully touching the sample holder to the poll piece!!! This can cause significant damage!!! You have been warned!!! - Can put a 5mm block on to of the sample holder then drive that into the poll pice - Or drive the holder directly into poll piece, then lower it 5mm. - Once you know sample is 5.0mm away from poll piece you do not adjust Z until after next step - Would then run final lens current calibration - Have to hold door close to pump - 4x bolts on right hand side adjust angle of door relative to chamber - This keeps you from having to push the door closed to get it to pump down - FIB column and SEM columns are not pointed at same spot - Set 5mm via methods - Calibrate final lens current - Adjust stage so Eucentric axis is under SEM column - One adjuster pushes, the other one pulls - Outside one is m3 bolt - Need to vent chamber to access the other adjuster - Math shortcut to adjust with minimal vent-pump cycles - David figure out the trig on this one, saves a ton of time doing this adjustment. Very clever. - Tilt 0-45 with sample in same spot - Then Tilt 22.5 - Measure how far feature moved from 0-22.5 - Multiply that number by 12.1, this is how far the stage needs to move - Moving by exact distance can be done by: - Adjusting push pull by quarter turn then calculate how far it moved - Use this to calibrate for the next move - Requires at least one vent/pump cycle - Using a dial indicator - Adjust stage to 5.0mm via right eccentric bearing adjustment - This will move stage left to right somewhat - ### Order of operations to address all of this - [ ] Level pneumatic platform - [x] Move scroll pump - [x] Door-chamber angle adjustment - [x] 5mm calibration - Loaded flat sample that was ok to touch poll piece with - Set stage tilt to 0 - Stage touched poll piece at Z: 2.1058mm - Drove stage to Z: 7.1058mm - Ran Final Lens Current Calibration - Set stage to 5mm away from poll piece (already done) 1. Focus image to set final lens current 2. Toggle stage between 5mm WD and 10mm WD and focus with respective alignment sliders to compensate final lens current - It has not update the Z WD link yet so 5mm is reading 7.1058mm and 10mm is readying 12.1058mm 3. Set the stage to 5mm WD and prefocus image using mouse (default right click drag on image) for the next step - during and after this step ==DO NOT USE FOCOUS KNOBS== 4. Precisely focus the image with mouse to set final lens remanence 5. Beam energy drops to 2kv. Use slider to set Final Lens Remanence for 2kV 6. Lens is degaussed, set 2kV remanence again 7. Resulting values - MdFinCf1: 0.785320 - MdFinCf3: -0.000006 - IFinRem: 1.469000 - WD is now reading 4.7mm when fully focused. Running calibration again. - I accidentally touched focus knob at the wrong time, this is likely what caused the offset. - New values - MdFinCf1: 0.785320 - MdFinCf3: -0.000003 - IFinRem: 1.958000 - Given the rest of the column and other optics have not been tuned yet this should be considered a coarse calibration - [x] Stage left to right via stage left side horizontal adjustment - First checking magnification calibration - Measured: 90.29um - Actual 100um - Ratio of 1.1075 - Set holy point to corner of part of sample - Adjusted so that holy point is on crosshairs at Tilt:0 and Tilt: 45 - Set tilt: 22.5 - Measured distance from holy point to cross hairs - D=84.55 um - ![[Pasted image 20240501203406.jpg|sm]] - Given offset ratio of 1.1075, D-actual = 93.6427 - To get actual distance axis is off multiply by 12.1 - D to move stage = 1133.0767 - In thousandths of an inch that is 0.0446 - So now the question is what direction do I move the stage? - Pretty sure I need to move to the right - Moved the stage right 44 thousandths on the dial indicator - ![[Pasted image 20240504192957.jpg|med]] - Had to back out the 4 set screws that set the door-chamber angle by 1/4 turn to allow the stage to move horizontally - The stage is moved with one of 2 adjusters. One move it left and the other moves it right - Right adjuster: Put an allen key in here to turn the head of the bolt. - ![[AAA52242-F673-43CD-9B5B-6C9CE19D7D49_1_105_c.jpeg|med]] - ![[Pasted image 20240504193238.jpg|med]] - Left Adjuster: Just put a long m3 hex in here - ![[Pasted image 20240504193331.jpg|med]] - Pumped down, stage now appears to be at (or at least much closer to) Eucentric - [-] Stage height via right side door eccentric bearing bolt height adjustment - After adjusting stage horizontal, the vertical seems to be dead on at 5mm WD - [x] New E-Beam Apertures - While chamber was vented to adjust stage swapped out apertures - Older holder is set up for silicon heated aperture strip. Apertures in heated strip are very worn out and contaminated - Do not have spare of silicon strip - Swapped for a holder that accepts standard 3mm pt apertures - Found 150um tall, 100um, 50um, and 50um tall apertures to install - Should be mostly 30um apertures, will have to change in future - Wobbled the aperture via the electron optics configurator - Selected the lens wobbler and manually enabled it - Using an alignment mode disabled external scan, but the main system monitor is facing away from the aperture i need to manipulate and as such I was wobbling using the open beam interface on my laptop. - Did the Stigmator alignment # 13 to eliminate the stig sweep - [x] Align the I-Column to the E-Column - Set stage to eccentric by tilting between tilt: 0 and tilt: 52 - Found a holy point with the e-beam, this is where I will move the I-Beam to point - Will not move stage after this - Paused scan and turned off e-beam. - Its possible to cause a gas burst while moving i-beam, so I do not want that to be able to affect the e-beam source - loosened all 8 I-Beam bolts by 1/2~1 turn - Began using flat head to move column around - ![[43CC2512-078F-4C7D-82C6-35DEFB88196A_1_105_c.jpeg|med]] - Finding it hard to move it far enough over to align beams - Moving the stage to find out how far is left to go... - Will have to use e-beam to navigate back to holy point, or will just type stage numbers back in - Starting stage X: 2.8913 Y: -12.5416 - Stage with I-beam on holy point: X: 2.4116 Y: -13.7132 - Difference: X: -0.4797 Y: -1.1716 - I am at the limit of how far I can move the I-Beam, and still not able to get the beams to over lap - Need to move the e-beam - Moving the e-beam caries the risk of damaging the through lens detector (TLD) lightpipe - Solution to reduce risk is to remove the SE electron detector assembly - Vented chamber - Noticed after removing the PMT (but not the light pipe and scintillator assembly) and looking thought the light pipe that the TLD lightpipe was very far off to one side - ![[Pasted image 20240503190257.jpg|med]] - Pulled the light pipe and scintillator assembly off but did not completely remove it as it has cables going to the poll piece that I can not disconnect without removing the ion column - With the risk of damaging the TLD now reduced, I loosened the bolts securing the column to the chamber - I moved the e-column towards the back of the chamber by approximately 2mm - ![[3379CB33-E509-4819-A6ED-65329062A8B1_1_105_c.jpeg|med]] - Reinstalled the light pipe and scintillator assembly - TLD is not much more centered - ![[Pasted image 20240503190638.jpg|med]] - Reinstalled the PMT - Pumped down system - Found new Eucentric after moving SEM column - Tilted stage to 52° and found a holy point with the e-beam, moved point under cross hairs - Turned off e-beam and made sure column isolation valve was closed before moving the ion column - Moved I-Beam around with big screw driver - After aligning holy point under the I-Beam cross hairs, began tightening down the 8 bolts to secure the column. - While doing this the image moved around a fair bit. Between a using a star pattern to tighten the bolts and moving it around a bit while tightening it I was able to get it fully secured and aligned. - Given the number of other alignments that still need to be done it both columns and with the stage this should be considered a coarse alignment.