The Advantages of Systematically Defocusing the Ion Beam for Focused Ion Beam Workflows

This article describes the benefits of defocusing the ion beam for standard FIB processing to mitigate common FIB artifacts. The adjustment leads to several positive outcomes, including increasing the efficiency of material deposition (or even gas-assisted milling) by moving the deposition (milling) regime from precursor-limited to beam-limited, reducing the formation of curtaining by allowing each ion to have a line-of-sight impact on the milling surface and decreasing FIB-induced thermal damage that is largely unaccounted for when milling metals, ceramics, and semiconductors.