Fabrication of In-situ Heating TEM Specimen Based on the FIB-SEM Dual Beam System

Due to the advantages of high accuracy of location and fabrication, the focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) dual beam system is extensively employed in the preparation of micro/nano-scale specimens used for cross-section preparation, micro/nano-prototyping, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atom probe tomography (APT) analyses. However, the development of in-situ characterization techniques in TEM requires higher quality of specimens, among which it is a significant challenge for preparing in-situ heating TEM specimens due to the heating chip geometry, especially during the processes of lift-out, transfer and thinning. Therefore, the FIB-SEM dual beam system is used in this work, and TEM specimens applicable to in-situ heating and characterization are successfully prepared through modifying procedures and parameters based on the traditional fabrication processes.