Monocrystalline Mo tips oriented to [110] are shown to be sharpened into atomic dimensions, by inert-gas ions impinging along the [110] axis. Xe+ ions accelerated to a few keV provided Mo tips less than 50 Å in apex diameter, in a time interval of 10 min or so. Much smaller radii of curvature were achieved by prolonged Ar+ sputtering at lower energies. It is believed that the technique proposed is promising for preparing focused ion and electron beam sources.
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Morishita et al. (1991) studied this question.