Modern materials science is no longer limited to observing materials; it is about understanding, modifying, and ultimately engineering them. Whether developing longer-lasting batteries, designing smaller semiconductor devices, or creating new biomaterials, researchers increasingly need tools that not only reveal what lies beneath the surface but also enable them to interact with materials with nanometer precision.
Advanced Focused Ion Beam–Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM) platforms, such as those developed by Tescan, address this challenge by combining high-resolution imaging, multimodal characterization, precise material modification, automation, and nanofabrication within a single platform.
Unlike conventional electron microscopes, which primarily provide images and analytical information, FIB-SEM combines two complementary beam technologies within a single instrument. A focused electron beam delivers high-resolution imaging and analytical data, while a focused ion beam enables precise material removal, site-specific sample preparation, and nanofabrication. Together, these capabilities transform the microscope from a passive imaging instrument into a complete nanoscale engineering platform.
The power of FIB-SEM lies in the fundamentally different ways electrons and ions interact with matter.
The electron beam excels at characterization. Electrons typically penetrate from hundreds of nanometers to several micrometers into the specimen, depending on the beam energy, angle of incidence, and material properties. During their interaction, they generate a variety of signals, including secondary electrons, backscattered electrons, cathodoluminescence, and characteristic X-rays, that reveal surface morphology, composition, crystallographic information, and other material properties. Because the electron beam transfers relatively little momentum, it provides highly detailed information while causing minimal physical modification to the specimen.
The ion beam, in contrast, behaves very differently. Ions are several thousand times heavier than electrons and therefore transfer significantly more momentum when they strike a material. Instead of penetrating deeply, they interact within only a few tens of nanometers beneath the surface, depending on the ion species, accelerating voltage, angle of incidence, and material. This shallow interaction concentrates energy close to the surface, enabling the ion beam to actively modify the material through sputtering (material removal, or milling), ion implantation, defect formation, amorphization and atomic mixing, and gas-assisted deposition or etching.
This fundamental difference explains why the two beams complement each other so effectively. The electron beam provides high-resolution imaging and analytical characterization, while the ion beam enables precise material modification. Together, they establish a continuous feedback loop that is unique to FIB-SEM:
Observe → Modify → Analyze → Decide/Optimize
Each modification can be immediately verified, analyzed, and correlated with complementary analytical data without removing the sample from the instrument. This closed-loop workflow enables efficient optimization of sample preparation, multimodal characterization, and nanofabrication while preserving the exact region of interest throughout the experiment.
Modern FIB-SEM systems employ two principal ion beam technologies, each optimized for different applications.
Gallium (Ga+) FIB has long been the standard for high-precision nanomachining. Its finely focused beam enables exceptional spatial resolution, making it the preferred choice for site-specific sample preparation, TEM lamella fabrication, circuit editing, and nanoscale device prototyping.
Xenon (Xe+) Plasma FIB extends these capabilities to much larger volumes. Thanks to beam currents that are orders of magnitude higher than conventional Ga+ FIB systems, Xe+ plasma FIB enables rapid removal of material while maintaining excellent precision. This makes it particularly well suited for large-area cross-sectioning, serial sectioning for 3D tomography, failure analysis, and preparation of large or complex specimens.
Rather than competing technologies, Ga+ FIB and Xe+ PFIB are complementary. Gallium excels when ultimate precision is required, whereas xenon plasma FIB provides dramatically higher throughput for applications involving large volumes or demanding sample preparation workflows.
Tescan offers both gallium FIB-SEM and xenon plasma FIB-SEM solutions, allowing researchers to select the technology best suited to their application - from ultimate nanoscale precision to high-throughput large-volume processing.
The defining capability of FIB-SEM is its ability to remove material with nanometer precision. Depending on the application, this can be achieved using either a high-resolution gallium ion beam or a high-throughput xenon plasma ion beam.
Unlike mechanical polishing or conventional chemical etching, FIB milling is entirely site-specific. Researchers can remove material exactly where needed while controlling the ion energy, beam current, and milling angle with exceptional precision.
This capability enables a wide range of workflows, including:
Serial sectioning for three-dimensional FIB-SEM tomography
Fabrication of complex two- and three-dimensional nanostructures
Rather than simply revealing the sample surface, FIB milling provides direct access to buried structures and enables precise site-specific sample preparation for subsequent analysis.
Although FIB-SEM supports numerous analytical workflows, sample preparation remains its most widely adopted application.
Researchers routinely use FIB-SEM to create site-specific cross sections, exposing buried defects, interfaces, multilayer structures, and other subsurface features while preserving regions that would often be damaged or inaccessible using conventional preparation techniques.
Perhaps the best-known example is the preparation of TEM lamellae - electron-transparent specimens extracted from precisely selected locations within a material. Modern automated workflows further improve the reproducibility, throughput, and consistency of lamella preparation while minimizing user intervention. These ultrathin sections enable transmission electron microscopy to investigate crystal defects, grain boundaries, interfaces, phase boundaries, and nanoscale features with sub-nanometer to atomic-scale resolution.
A similar site-specific approach is also applied to prepare micropillars for mechanical testing, specimens for electrical and thermal measurements, and samples for atom probe tomography (APT) or other advanced analytical techniques.
Advanced Tescan FIB-SEM systems have evolved far beyond simple imaging instruments into comprehensive multimodal characterization platforms. By integrating complementary analytical techniques, including energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), Raman spectroscopy, and cathodoluminescence (CL) within a single workflow, they provide a holistic understanding of complex materials.
Instead of studying structure, chemistry, or crystallography separately, researchers can correlate all of these datasets to build a much more complete understanding of complex materials.
The integration of these complementary techniques enables truly correlative microscopy, where structural, crystallographic, elemental, molecular, and chemical information can be acquired from exactly the same region of interest.
Another defining capability of FIB-SEM is three-dimensional (3D) tomography. By combining serial FIB sectioning with SEM imaging and multimodal analysis, each newly exposed cross section can be imaged and characterized before the next layer is removed. The resulting image stack is reconstructed into a high-resolution three-dimensional representation of the material.
This approach enables detailed investigation of grain structures,pore networks, phase distributions, and degradation mechanisms that cannot be understood from a single two-dimensional cross section.
Tescan extends the capabilities of FIB-SEM through correlative microscopy, enabling both precise relocation of the same region of interest across complementary instruments and integration of multimodal analytical data. By correlating X-ray micro-CT, light microscopy, FIB-SEM, and other complementary techniques, researchers can identify regions of interest non-destructively, navigate accurately to the same location, and combine structural, crystallographic, elemental, molecular, and chemical information into a comprehensive understanding of complex materials across multiple length scales.
FIB-SEM is not only a characterization platform, it is also a powerful tool for nanofabrication and nanoprototyping.
At the core of these capabilities is FIB milling, which enables precise, site-specific material removal for shaping, patterning, and modifying structures with nanometer precision. Combined with gas-assisted deposition, etching, and electron beam lithography (EBL), researchers can fabricate, prototype, and refine complex nanoscale structures directly inside the microscope.
These capabilities support a wide range of applications, including semiconductor circuit editing, photonic and plasmonic device fabrication, micro- and nanosensor prototyping, and fundamental nanotechnology research.
Because fabrication, imaging, and analytical characterization are integrated within the same instrument, structures can be inspected and optimized immediately after each processing step, enabling an efficient iterative workflow:
Design → Fabricate → Characterize → Optimize
Few other technologies integrate nanometer-scale fabrication, multimodal characterization, and immediate feedback within a single instrument, allowing researchers to fabricate, inspect, analyze, and optimize structures in one continuous workflow.
The versatility of FIB-SEM has made it an indispensable platform across a broad range of scientific disciplines and industrial sectors.
Materials Science: Enables microstructural characterization, failure analysis, site-specific sample preparation, fabrication of mechanical test specimens, three-dimensional tomography, and in situ experiments to investigate material behavior under external stimuli.
Semiconductor Industry: Supports circuit editing, defect localization, device cross-sectioning, delayering, process development, and failure analysis of advanced microelectronic devices.
Energy Materials and Batteries: Provides detailed insight into electrode architectures, electrode–electrolyte interfaces, degradation mechanisms, and chemical distributions, while enabling in situ and operando studies during electrochemical cycling, as well as preparation of air-sensitive samples using cryogenic workflows and inert gas transfer for correlative and high-resolution characterization.
Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication: Enables the fabrication and nanoprototyping of complex two- and three-dimensional micro- and nanostructures, including photonic and plasmonic devices, MEMS/NEMS components, micro- and nanosensors, and other application-specific structures.
Life Sciences: Supports cryogenic sample preparation for cryo-electron microscopy, biological tissue sectioning, volume imaging, and correlative microscopy while preserving native biological structures.
The growing importance of FIB-SEM reflects a broader evolution in microscopy. Today's researchers need more than high-resolution imaging, they require integrated platforms that combine imaging, multimodal characterization, precise material modification, sample preparation, nanofabrication, and correlative workflows within a single environment.
By uniting the analytical capabilities of electron microscopy with the transformative power of focused ion beams, FIB-SEM enables scientists not only to observe materials, but also to prepare, modify, characterize, and engineer them with nanometer precision.
As materials become increasingly complex and research challenges demand more comprehensive characterization, FIB-SEM continues to evolve into a fully integrated platform for scientific discovery and technological innovation. These capabilities are accelerating advances across materials science, semiconductors, energy storage, life sciences, and nanotechnology.
At Tescan, we continue to advance FIB-SEM technology by integrating automation, advanced analytical techniques, plasma FIB, cryogenic workflows, and correlative microscopy into a unified ecosystem. By connecting complementary technologies and intelligent workflows, Tescan enables researchers to investigate, characterize, and engineer materials with greater precision, efficiency, and confidence than ever before.
Written by Tomas Samoril, Ph.D.
Product Marketing Manager - Materials Science