Recent advances of focused ion beam technology

Recent advances of focused ion beam techniques are reviewed. These include ion implantation, ion beam assisted etching and deposition, and in situ fabrication. Owing to their maskless capability and high current density, focused ion beams found important applications as a tool for microsurgery for ULSI devices or material analysis, and in situ fabrication. Recent focused ion beam systems can produce focused ion beams with a diameter smaller than 10 nm and are of increasing importance also as nanofabrication tool. Various low dimensional structures have been fabricated using FIB mainly in {GaAs}/{GaAlAs} heterostructure. For this application, FIB is used to define device structures by converting n-layers to semi-insulating layer or by forming active layers.