Spring newsletter
A short in a MIM capacitor found and highlighted by Resistive Contrast Imaging (RCI).

Spring newsletter

In this newsletter:

  • Karl Boche is touring around the US together with our partners from Angstrom Scientific and In-Situ Microscopy Alliance (IMA).
  • Registration to free IMA workshops at Covalent Metrology CA, and MIT.nano , MA, is still open.
  • Our applications team released a new application note on finding shorts in capacitors' dielectric layers. Low-resistance defects are tricky to find, but using our EFA setup with pre-amplifiers, it's possible!
  • MiBots can be used not only for electrical nanoprobing! Our users from China used it to precisely position nanoribbons made of magnetic 2D materials for heat conductivity measurements that was recently published in Applied Physics Letters.


Imina goes to the US

Karl Boche , our area Sales Manager, will tour the US for almost the entire month:

?? California (Bay Area, LA, Monterrey) Apr 3-5 & Apr 16-23

?? Portland, Oregon Apr 8-9

??? Seattle, Washington Apr 10

?? Vancouver, Canada Apr 11-12

?? Boston, Massachusetts Apr 24-25

You may also catch him at the FCMN conference in Monterey, CA.

Together with our partners from Angstrom Scientific and In-Situ Microscopy Alliance , we are organizing two in-person workshops on latest trends in correlated in-situ SEM studies.?

Alemnis AG , Imina Technologies SA , NenoVision and point electronic GmbH will present their most advanced tools for mechanical, electrical and surface testing, and a few users of such systems will share their first-hand experience and results.

The workshops are free and limited to 30-40 attendees.


Highly localized short detected in a faulty capacitor by resistive contrast imaging with signal pre-amplification.

Spotting shorts: how to use RCI to find low resistance defects in metal-insulator-metal capacitors

Finding defects in a capacitor's insulating layer can be tricky, as there is little resistance contrast between a defect and the surrounding structures. In our latest application note, we show how to take Resistive Contrast Imaging (RCI) to the next level. Our?advanced electrical failure analysis module equipped with? point electronic GmbH pre-amplifiers collects the signal with much better signal-to-noise ratio then without pre-amplifiers, and therefore significantly improves contrast. We use this setup to show how RCI can be an effective technique to highlight shorts within the oxide of Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) capacitors. RCI with significantly enhanced contrast yields unparalleled localization precision of 500 nm for such fails! Knowing the defect location with such precision helps to quickly prepare a lamella for further investigation with TEM.

Read the application note


MnPSe3 flake transferred onto a membrane for thermal bridge measurement (left), and the AFM scan of the region marked with a rectangle (right). Image from Magnon–phonon coupling modulation via dimensional reduction in thin antiferromagnet MnPSe3 nanoribbons by Wenkang Chen et al.,

Publication from our users:?Magnon–phonon coupling modulation via dimensional reduction in thin antiferromagnet MnPSe3?nanoribbons

We designed miBots for electrical probing, but they can manipulate nanoscale objects, too.

In a recent study, miBots helped to precisely position 2D nanoribbons between two membranes for systematic measurements of thermal conductivity in MnPSe3 samples with varying thickness. Researchers relied on Van der Waals interaction to pick up the nanoribbons and transfer them to the membranes to form a thermal bridge.

Magnetic 2D materials are now drawing active interest as platforms for spintronics applications. Understanding heat transfer is key to ensure consistent and durable performance of magnetic devices, but its mechanisms in 2D magnetic materials are not well understood yet.

Wenkang Chen, Ning Zhao and their colleagues from Phonon Engineering Research Center of Jiangsu Province, at 南京师范大学 , and Center for Phononics and Thermal Energy Science, at 同济大学 , led by Jun Zhou and Xiangfan Xu, studied heat conductivity in nanoribbons of MnPSe3 and found non-monotonous thickness dependence, with reduced thermal conductivity in both very thin and very thick samples.

Researchers attribute their observations to the interplay between phonon scattering, confinement, and magnon-phonon coupling.

Read the paper here.

Such experiments show that miBots are an all-round tool for any lab studying nanoscale materials: from characterization of electrical properties of nanoscale samples and devices, to sample fabrication, where sub-micron scale manipulation is required. miBots save valuable hours or even weeks of work, while being easy to master and to use.

Discover our MICRO solution

Imina Technologies setup for electrical probing of die-scale samples under integrated optical microscope.


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