Month: September 2016

Magellan e-beam shut-off issue occurred on Sept 8, solved on Oct. 4

qiyinl / / Instrument Status

Hi, All Magellan Users,

 

There were a few cases that the e-beam was shut off without any warning in last few days Sept 6-8.

FEI service was called on Sept 8.

The FEI engineer came in today (Sept 9) has completed Magellan SEM maintenance (source alignment).

The e-beam shut-off issue occurred again Sept 19-20.

FEI service was called. The FEI engineer thought a bake-out of e-column should improve the vacuum level and prevent the e-beam from shutting-off due to the vacuum reaching limit. We planned to have a bake out on Monday Sept 26 overnight.

The Magellan was baking out on Sept 26 overnight. However, it was found that the vacuum could not be recovered to UHV in the source.  We decided to have another baking out tonight Sept 27.

Sept 28, We continued working on the column vacuum issue and found the IGP2 may have degraded and need to be replaced. The IGP2 and new source was ordered together and they would arrive on Sept 30th.

Sept 30, the new source and IGP2 was installed. The column was pumped and baked over weekend.

Oct. 3, Monday, FEI engineer performed source conditioning and e-beam alignment for the whole day.

Oct. 4, Tue, noon, the alignment was done. The Magellan seemed to work.

 

Thanks,

Qiyin