Scanning Electron Microscope

Original TED description

This tender concerns the acquisition of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) for a university facility that provides access to an extensive suite of nanofabrication and characterisation tools as one of its core purposes. Due to a recently identified bottleneck in the suite of high-end characterisation in the cleanroom, DTU wishes to acquire a SEM. This problem has arisen as the result of multiple breakdowns among the aging and current instruments thus exposing an unexpected vulnerability in the overall process flow of several of our commercial users. The instrument is intended to meet the characterization requirements of DTU’s key commercial customers. Accordingly, only a high-end system equipped with a field emission source, capable of delivering high emission at low energy spread, will be considered acceptable. The system must provide state-of-the-art lateral image resolution of 0.8 nm or better at an accelerating voltage of 15 kV, and 0.9 nm or better at 1 kV, both achieved without beam deceleration or sample bias and using the in-column secondary electron detector. The SEM must be compatible with samples originating directly from customer production processes and must therefore be capable of handling wafers with diameters of up to 200 mm. Typical substrate materials include silicon, fused silica, and quartz. These materials cannot be coated to reduce charging effects during SEM analysis, and the instrument must therefore be capable of imaging such non-conductive samples without the application of conductive coatings.