In-situ Nanoscale Characterization of Electrical and Magnetic properties of 3D Nanostructures by combination of AFM, SEM and FIB

Combining different analytical methods into one instrument is of great importance for the simultaneous acquisition of complementary information. Especially the in-situ combination of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) enables completely new insights in the micro and nano-world. In this work, we present the unique in-situ combination of scanning electron and ion microscopy (SEM/FIB) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) for nanoscale characterization [1-3].
We will present a variety of case studies to highlight the advantages of interactive correlative in-situ nanoscale characterization for different materials and nanostructures. We show results for in-situ electrical characterization by conductive AFM for 2D materials (Figure 1) as well as electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) of piezoceramic films.
In a further step, we demonstrate how in-situ correlative analysis with the AFSEM in an SEM can be extended into the third dimension to measure nanomechanical properties of soft material. To achieve this, FIB slicing and mapping of nanomechanical properties using the AFSEM is performed in repetitive steps to build up a 3-dimensional elasticity map.