An Introduction to the Helium Ion Microscope

In order to get high resolution images from any scanning beam microscope one must be able to produce a sufficiently small probe, have a small interaction volume in the substrate and have an abundance of information-rich particles to collect to create the image. A typical scanning electron microscope is able to meet all of these requirements to some degree. However, a helium ion microscope based on a Gas Field Ion Source (GFIS) has significant advantages over the SEM in all three categories.