Improved nanometric control of ions and electrons via laser ionization and coincident detection

Equipe MFC: Daniel Comparat, Yan Picard
Job description:

The 2year postdoctoral position is part of the project
CITRON (Correlated Ion elecTRon fOr Nanoscience) funded
by the European Research Council (ERC) and of the project
FIBback (Focused Ion Beam by correlated electron
feedback) funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, fr: National Agency for Research).
This project is a collaboration between Laboratoire Aimé Cotton (LAC) and Orsay Physics company, with support of Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d’Orsay (ISMO) and Service de Physique de l’Etat Condensé (SPEC).
The successful applicant will be hosted in the Paris region laboratory LAC located at Orsay City.

Many applications rely on extreme miniaturization, which imposes to control the energy, the number and the locations
of electrons or ions at the nanometric level. The longterm goal of our projects is to harness the simultaneous
production, coincident detection and fast control of both ions and electrons in a bid to enhance ion and electron beam
properties.

More specifically, in contrast with standard tools, the proposed developments rely on the ionization of a neutral
atomic species and on the simultaneous production, detection and control of both the ion and the electron. Such a
detection in coincidence yields correlated information on both particles that can be used to improve the beam
properties, like the deterministic knowledge of the creation of the charged particles, and the correction of their
trajectories in real time. Using this novel technique, which we have recently demonstrated, we propose to develop
three innovative prototypes:

• 1) A focused ion beam using feedback control with unprecedented focused properties. This will be used to realize
semiconductor circuitediting at the (sub)nm scale.

• 2) A deterministic source of (potentially) any type of ion for controlled implantation at the nm level. This will be
used for ondemand doping of quantum devices.

• 3) A highresolution electronenergyloss microscope (HREELM) with precise knowledge of the electron energy
and the position on the sample. It be used to realize both imaging and vibrational spectroscopy for surface analysis.

During the two years, the postdoctoral researcher will work on one of the three setups. The successful applicant will
have to work on atomic beam laser excitation and with fast time and position sensitive detectors.
He/She will also strongly interact with other PhD students throughout the duration of the project and will thus have a decisive role to maximise the synergy between them and other groups for an optimal knowledge transfer.

Keywords:

Atomic and molecular physics, Rydberg atoms, ion beam, electron beam, electron microscopy, focused ion beam,
charged particles optics, time and position sensitive detectors.
Daniel Comparat, Yan Picard - Contacter
Bâtiment 505, Rue du Belvédère, 91400 Orsay