In order to examine surfaces of materials, a prerequisite is a microscope which combines ultra-high vacuum (UHV) with surface science cleaning and characterization techniques such as ion beam sputtering, annealing, and Auger spectroscopy. In order to achieve this, we have mounted onto the side of a UHV-H9000 microscope LEED/Auger, an ion gun, and optical heating; in the transfer chamber specimens can be cleaned at a base pressure of 2×10-10 torr and transferred into the microscope which operates at pressures better than 2×10-10 torr. With this marriage, it is relatively simple to prepare and characterize clean surfaces.As an example, thin gold film specimens, textured with the [111] normal to the film, were made in a standard vacuum evaporator and floated onto a gold grid. The transfer chamber was then baked-out at 250°C for about 12 hours to achieve UHV conditions. Figure 1 shows an image taken from the gold film after bakeout.
Formation of High Purity Films by Negative Ion Beam Sputtering Using an Ultra-high Vacuum Self-Sputtering Method
