Current density profile extraction of focused ion beams based on atomic force microscopy contour profiling of nanodots

An approach to the profile extraction of nanoscale focused ion beams is presented. It is based on contour profiling of dots patterned at various ion doses by focused ion beam exposure. While the surface contour depends on the spatial variation of the beam-solid interaction, at no single ion dose the contour reflects the current density profile of the beam itself, due to effects such as target swelling, redeposition, and angle-dependent sputtering yield. Instead, we monitor the surface deviation relative to the unimplanted case as a function of dose for the radial positions of interest, and determine scaling factors for the dose such that the scaled curves coincide for all radial positions in the regions of small milling depths. We apply the method to beam shape determination of 10 and 50 keV focused ion beams using silicon and GaAs as targets and atomic force microscopy as a contour profiling technique. Despite the different irradiation response of silicon and GaAs, the beam profiles evaluated on these substrate materials agree excellently, which demonstrates that our approach is substrate independent. It allows profile extractions of nanoscale focused ion beams with high accuracy and high sensitivity even in the tails of the beams. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.