Cut anything, even diamond

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Today we're looking at an ion milling machine. This instrument accelerates argon particles to high velocities and then slam them into your sample, acting as an atomic sandblaster. The sample is slowly etched due to the transfer of kinetic energy from the argon gas molecules. It can etch literally any material, even diamond!
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[@BreakingTaps]

What are those little "whiskers" on the diamond? Carbon adhesive goop, just an artifact from imaging 😅 I scanned the top of the diamond, then rotated it to get more of the profile. Apparently the carbon adhesive dot that's used to hold it down left some whiskers of polymer behind after I rotated it. Meant to put a caption on screen about that, but totally forgot!

[@ddegn]

You read my mind. I was wondering what those things were. Thanks for the explanation and thanks for another really interesting video.

[@williammorris1763]

Very epic, be interesting to see what else you can do with it! ❤️🔥🫡

[@Pyroteknikid]

I appreciate the 30uM rick roll. Good stuff. Looks like a fun new toy.

[@zpbeats3938]

In 3D printing terms, we call that "stringing". In Ion Blasting terms, we call that "no damn clue"

[@crimson4066]

7:50-8:10 How do you analyze the sample for different elements?

[@JorenVaes]

The chip research group I used to work at used a focused Ion Beam (FIB) to do chip repair and modification for prototype chips. We can go in and even deposit resistive material, or build up entirely new probe pads to connect to the center of a circuit to debug things. Pretty cool stuff, very expensive machine. The dummy filling process has made it much more challenging to get to the lower metal layers, and as a result we have to be clever about it when we etch or design.

[@BreakingTaps]

Super cool! FIB is such a neat technique in general, but really cool that it's used to repair or alter chips. The deposited material is done by GIS right? Inject a gas and let the ion beam chemically alter/bond it to the sample?

[@gert_kruger]

Did not know it is possible to repair a chip. 🤯

[@JorenVaes]

​@@BreakingTapsI'm not really that familiar with the practical process - I was lucky enough to never need my chips tinkered with after we got them back from the foundry. We have one guy in the group who is the expert and spends a lot of time on the machine. There is a lot of 'Fingerspitzengefühl' involved with getting all of the parameters working optimally to get good etching and so on without destroying the underlying chip through stress etc. Main way I have seen it used a few times is to kill unwanted oscillations in unstable millimeter-wave amplifiers. At some point someone was even putting in resistors to reduce gain (and thus chance of oscillations) that could be connected if there were some issues after manufacturing. You can also trim resistors with it, but usually it is much easier to do that with a laser - unless you need to be really precise, or want to deposit too, using a precision laser to cut traces is much more (cost) efficient. Added bonus that the learning curve for the laser is sufficiently low so PhD researchers can operate them by themselves, unlike the FIB which requires high vacuum, expensive gas mixtures, and in general a lot of training. I remember a situation where a researcher was building custom diodes for plasmonic detection from scratch, and each diode involved >5kUSD worth of tungsten-deposition gas or something.

[@AndrewZonenberg]

@@BreakingTaps The precursor gas (e.g. W(CO)6 for tungsten deposition or XeF2 for silicate etching) sorbs onto the surface, forms a monolayer, and reacts slowly or not at all until activated/decomposed by secondary electrons from the ion beam scanning a particular part of your sample. So for deposition you get W (and some C and O impurities because the process isn't perfect) on your sample surface with the CO sucked out by the vacuum system. For etching, the F2 reacts with your sample and the Xe is removed. You can get the same effect using the electron beam in a dual beam system (or even a SEM with GIS - a rare but not unheard of combination) but it's much slower than with FIB due to the lower activation energy and beam current. It's sometimes useful for things like protecting super fragile samples with a thin metal film before doing more deposition with the ion beam, or doing chemical staining (with no sputtering) to selectively etch regions of a sample.

[@JorenVaes]

@@AndrewZonenbergHah, Fancy meeting you here!

[@FaldoAu]

The world needs more of this and less noise. Incredible stuff as always.

[@braydenj03]

Ion thruster but confused

[@zollotech]

Those cross sections look incredible and your animations from Blender are great. Thanks for sharing.

[@pvic6959]

ngl, the animations were one of my favorite things in this video!

[@joshua.snyder]

Robo Zollo mass commenter strikes again.

[@fridje]

Really nice work with the Blender viz in this video - Blender's particle engine and the molecular script can be a pain to work with, but you got them looking great, and even showing real-world behaviour!

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks! Definitely took a lot of tweaking and fiddling to get it doing something close to what I wanted. But pretty happy how it turned out!

[@rodrigoalvarez1712]

Wait, what? You can simulate particle physics in blender? I’ll Google it later… Any pointers or code?

[@fridje]

@@BreakingTaps you should definitely be happy with it! If you’re interested in some more blender science visuals, there was a fantastic talk at the blender conference last year about rendering proteins at world-record speeds. It’s up as a VOD on the Blender youtube channel.

[@dewakbarr]

broo where u get that pfp? thats so fricking cool

[@fridje]

@@dewakbarr i made it! in blender :D its from a short film on my channel

[@johnsjarboe]

It'd be really cool to have a video series following you troubleshooting lab equipment like this.

[@NoblePineapples]

The thing I absolutely love about this incredibly underrated channel is that I learn so so much about things I wasn't even aware existed. And even for things that aren't even covered but merely mentioned, allowing me to delve into another subject on the internet. Thank you so much for what you do. You are a treasure.

[@timeastman8319]

You have two main knobs to control etch rate in different materials: * Incident Angle: Metals etch faster with a normal, or head-on angle. Polyimide or photoresist etch fastest at about 60°. * Relative Mass: Matching the mass of your ion to the material to be etched can change the selectivity. For example, choosing a high mass noble gas could increase the etch rate on your tungsten while decreasing the rate on aluminum. I have to compliment your atom-on-atom model of the interaction during etch, it was beautiful. One thing though: regardless of incident angle the ejected atoms tend to leave normal to the surface, with a population distribution that falls off with the cosine of the angle away from normal. There is a small population tail opposite the incident angle of the beam though. This is because the momentum is transferred into the surface and the subsurface atoms reflect it back to the surface.

[@Raeilgunne]

makes sense if you think of it, like a captive poolball, there's really only one way for the ball/atom to go, and the remaining energy is dissipated through the structure as heat.

[@MiZiDD1]

Awesome blast from the past! I used the exact model of machine for my university diploma thesis some 20+ years ago. It had the roughing pump (a diaphragm style pump inside the case though). Brings back memories... Hours and hours of disassembling and cleaning the etching gun, even the tiniest metal flake could short out the HV.

[@florianbeck4283]

You should never ever attempt to run a turbomolecular pump in air. These devices are designed for removing most of the remaining particles in a fine vacuum to achieve an (ultra) high vacuum and turn at ultra high RPMs. Running them in air (or any other relatively dense gas) will easily overwhelm the mechanism and crash the whole thing. Also, Argon molecules don’t exist - as a noble gas, Argon exists only as single atoms ;). But don’t get me wrong, this was a great and very informative video!

[@ghosttwo2]

Making Argon fluorohydride out of spite...

[@martinhybelbauer4857]

0:24 edge any surface huh?

[@MeniscoManeiro]

🥵

[@ahmehhhd]

🤭

[@OhHeyTrevorFlowers]

Did he just rickroll us at the atomic scale?

[@Jonas_Aa]

was looking for this comment. I thought the same.

[@darth_dan8886]

Yes. Yes he did.

[@_jax]

@@darth_dan8886funnily enough I was looking for this exact reply

[@TrevorD19]

Rick will never give you up. Nor will he let you down.

[@indridcold8433]

I am not sure. But all these extremely tiny things make me feel very good about myself.

[@FriendlyCynic]

0:53 Stop it. Leave that poor turbo alone.

[@ExploringNew1]

8:45 you never fail to rickroll us in a microscopic level

[@FiglioBastardo]

This is really cool and something I didn't know I needed to see. Thanks for this great breakdown of a subject I never knew existed.

[@DigitalJedi]

I remember using these all the time during my doctorate program. I took so many cross sections of through-silicon-vias (TSVs) and surface micro-bumps, testing ways to stick chips together. I also remember using these machines to place in some "bodge wires" and fix up some very tiny pads (even sometimes those little bumps themselves) on prototype dies. Fascinating machines and incredibly powerful tools in the semiconductor world, but I've very glad my work is all computational now, as these things take forever to go from step to step compared to logic and signal simulations I can just let run.

[@sixmonkeys4796]

If you scale this concept up just a little bit you get Quasar jets :D They can very gently etch galaxies out of existence.

[@tage_heritage]

DIB operator for 11 years here. We use the FIB for TEM microscopy. Thanks for bringing what I do for a job to light!

[@iemozzomei]

Never a dull video, it's awesome knowing I'll learn something super cool when you post! I wonder how feasible making a motion system for it would be, maybe nab the JWST flexture mechanism?

[@BreakingTaps]

It has definitely crossed my mind! Would be nice to replace the existing sample stage (since it's missing parts already), so might be neat to replace it with a little XY stage

[@saftmeisterruffel8820]

I was prepared to watch a video with a bunch of cuts of any material and what I got was a guy talking about cutting and then some 100 microscope zooms onto some random stuff that I didnt care about at all. Keep up the good work 🙂

[@tatianaes3354]

*ONE small* thing to add: Diamond etching/polishing has worked in your case because the diamond particles you bought were not of a high grade purity and crystalline uniformity. In the latter case it would take way, way longer before you could see any noticeable result. To speed it up, you might need a much more powerful/plentiful ion guns.

[@diegofernandez4789]

Love how you explain. Complex topics but very easy to understand.

[@TotesCray]

The info is awesome, the ion mill is neat, but the animations are incredible! They make the subject matter so much more understandable. Thanks for all you do!

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks! Been teaching myself Blender lately, glad the animations helped convey the information better!

[@avenuex3731]

@@BreakingTapsI’ve been ‘teaching myself’ Blender for a while. My stuff is not like this. Salute!

[@LtDan-fy7lc]

I can't help but keep thinking about what would happen if you accidentally got hit by one of those ion beams. Does not seem like a good time.

[@ToxxiSSG]

It's very tempting to try to put my hand in there, or is that just me?

[@lalitasharma6687]

This is how we make nano technology right this is top down method

[@senseiplay8290]

NO You can't just casually rickroll us in a science video, that should be 10000% Illegal!!!

[@whyjnot420]

Yet again you show me one of the cooler things I have seen in awhile. (The last was that stop motion animation using the electron microscope.) This really is a neat bit of kit.

[@Samonie67]

seeing you try to turn on the molecular turbopump hurt me inside, even though it's already broken it feels so wrong to do

[@stevenbrazell8460]

I work on and teach ion implanter theory for the semiconductor industry and one thing to take into consideration is the process gas used (hydrogen or helium are the most dangerous) can cause x-ray, gamma and neutron radiation when interacting with certain materials like boron in graphite. I doubt the extraction voltage is anywhere near the levels that can cause radiation but it is still possible. When talking about angular etching, this is also applied on silicon wafers during implant. Depending on the material composition at the atomic level we will twist and rotate the wafer to help mitigate what we call channeling where ions are driven deeper in between the crystal lattice. And yes, the nitrogen layer could very possibly be a titanium nitride, tantalum nitride or any other combination. These are typically used as barrier or glue layers to help prevent the attraction or repellent of certain materials based on their interaction with one another.

[@RodeoGreenback]

We used to have an ion mill for making 3d models of geologic samples for oil and gas reservoir characterization. Basically it would mill down a layer of material, do a scan with the microprobe, then rinse and repeat. Stacking all the scanned layers together got you a pretty decent 3d model of the sample.

[@ManyHeavens42]

You can do the same thing with Sound, the Egyptians did it. 💨

[@ungoodwoodworker]

Would love to see some detailed videos of the problems and fixes used to get it up and running.

[@BreakingTaps]

Yeah in retrospect I should have filmed some of that. Was just deep in debugging mode and didn't think about it. A lot of the issues ended up being related to the vacuum gauge (it was _really_ dirty and needed cleaning). The reported vacuum level would sometimes fluctuate wildly, which would confuse the machine and think the airlock mechanism had triggered. That had all kinds of effects like turning off the HV supply, messing with the turbo, actuating the airlock vent, etc. The rough vac pump needs a new diaphragm, so I just replaced it with my other pump for now. Some of the needle valves needed cleaning, and the ion guns needed cleaning too (they get really finicky once material starts to build up, especially insulators). And I think the bearings in my turbo are dieing, but that's a problem for a different day :)

[@adrianpip2000]

@@BreakingTaps I totally get that filming everything while you're trying to think and troubleshoot is probably kinda annoying. However, I would definitely have loved to see some more "behind the scenes", even if it's just filmed with a lower quality camera (which could perhaps make it less of a nuisance for you). --- rambling continues --- While the results are really cool to see, I'm almost more interested in the process. For example, I have a Pirani gauge that's behaving kinda weirdly, and was considering trying to clean/fix it, although I'm not sure if that's even possible - most sources just seem to say that you should be real careful with them, and that's about it (i.e. probably impossible to fix/clean). I'm guessing the vacuum gauge you're referring to is a different one since you go down to ⁓10e-5 Torr, so it probably wouldn't have mattered, but it's just an example of the kind of small things that can be really useful to some people. Sadly that level of detail probably doesn't attract quite as many views, though.

[@seeigecannon]

I really enjoy working on black boxes. A couple years ago I got a helium leak detector from the late 70/early 80's working, and now I am working on a home project to get a HPLC from 1997 up and running. The ion mill sounds like a lot of fun.

[@wildgophers91]

Man the visualizations are amazing! so cool! Production values going through the roof.

[@Hurpdurpdipidydoo]

The fact that you were able to diagnose this and get it working correctly is probably just as cool as the machine itself.

[@DarkNemesis25]

this is super cool, I've used these tools to design transducer biosensors but we referred to them as plasma deposition sputtering machines. Applying atomic coatings of gold in specific ways. Really incredible to see electron microscopy of it though!

[@Inityx]

🦀 RUST SHIRT RUST SHIRT 🦀

[@roxasparks]

-crab raves-

[@CuriousScientist]

Those scratches at around 9:30 can be avoided with good mechanical polishing practices, it does not need ion milling... Struers OP-S colloidal silica with the appropriate polishing cloth (MD-Nap or MD-chem) can easily give you the desired results. Ion milling, or more precisely, focused ion beam (FIB) milling can also give more. For example, you can dig out small lamellae for TEM investigations. I used to make them, they were typically 10x20 um large and approximately 100 nm thin at the end of the procedure. The thinning was also done by the FIB, it was a very gentle (and time-consuming) polishing. Also, it is a great method to increase the "resolution" for element analysis (EDS/WDS) in materials. One can dig a cross-section of interest with the FIB, then can dig a trench a few micrometres behind the cross-section. This effectively decreases the volume where the X-ray photons come from, thus the analysis will be less "noisy". Oh, yes, the FIB I used was using gallium for milling and then I could also use it for deposition, but then it was either carbon or tungsten.

[@DaveEtchells]

Wow, this is insanely cool! (Fantastic vid as always too, the animations were great!) I hadn’t been aware of ion milling before, nano-polishing optics for final figure correction seems like it would be an orders-of-magnitude improvement over conventional mechanical polishing. I toured a Panasonic lens factory a number of years ago, and saw them hand polishing(!) the tungsten-alloy molds used to make aspheric lenses. The aspheric profile of the mold is formed with a single-point diamond on an ultra-precision lathe. These are quite accurate, but the problem is the diamond tool leaves behind a nanometers-deep spiral groove that can result in ugly “onion-ring” bokeh in the molded lenses. (Bokeh is the term for how out-of-fossil objects are rendered by a lens. Onion ring bokeh makes the big soft background blobs from out of focus background lights in a scene literally look like slices of onions, it’s very ugly and distracting.) They fixed this by *hand polishing* the molds. A worker would wrap a cloth impregnated with ultra -fine diamond abrasive around their fingertip and very gently rub the surface of the tungsten blank to polish away the grooves. They had a high resolution surface profilometer that they used to check their work, taking many passes on different parts of the blank to both remove the grooves and maintain the aspheric profile. It was incredible that they could do this manually to a precision of 10s of nanometers, and at the time it was a trade secret of Panasonic’s. A couple of years later it became standard industry practice. This seems like a perfect application of Ion Milling, I wonder if that’s how it’s done now? The next time I am talking to a Panasonic optical engineer I will ask him. A quick question: What’s the schmutz on the unmilled surface of the diamond on the left side of the frame at about 10:44 in the video? Is that just surface dirt or is the diamond itself that irregular due to poor polishing? What a great toy! (It a,so strikes me as an incredibly cheap way to get a high-vacuum system driven by a turbo pump 👍😁)

[@MrPatrick1207]

For the rough area at 10:44, at the far left of the frame that’s what random carbon gunk (think oils, random grime) typically looks like in an SEM image. Much closer the etch interface, there may be some roughening due to redeposition of sputtered atoms, or may be roughening in a region which received a low flux of ions near the edge of the main beam.

[@DaveEtchells]

@@MrPatrick1207 Great, thanks for the explanation!

[@Pascal33Hitman33]

Even as an Electrical Engineer (currently doing my master's degree) specializing in Semiconductors I'm very impressed by your abilities and the accuracy of the presented content. Nice job and fun to watch!

[@simonRTJ]

Tip: Never run a turbo pump at atmospheric pressure. you can kill it.

[@friskydingo5370]

Awesome video. I've ben exploring sputtering osmium targets and trying to grow crystalline samples in a quartz furnace. Thanks for the tip about the analog controller. I was able to use the old thermal couple it improved my results by several factors. Extreme control over the temperature has solved the growth rate and size. Thank you again 👍

[@ProjectPhysX]

Amazing video as always! Haha at 4:44 two particles orbit each other :D

[@morkovija]

This is what I wish more people were doing as their hobby. So much potential!

[@nekocatmeow7959]

lemme just grab some ion mill on some nearby hobby store

[@RainbowLayer92]

I just etched my first diamonds! Time to pick up some more argon canisters 🎉

[@ChaosPootato]

Next level rick rolling, now invisible to the naked eye !

[@danielreed5199]

You know the rules, and so do ion.

[@unvergebeneid]

Humanity has created such amazing tools. Not just this ion mill but also the microchips we tend to take for granted. Precision engineering doesn't begin to describe these marvels. It's incredible that we all carry them around in our pockets.

[@rafaelguida2317]

I've been amazed by what you accomplish in this channel. Wheter with a team or by yourself, it is amazing to see how one's effort combined with the wide amount of information can lead to something that would require a whole research group. Congrats!

[@DeathByFoodTruck]

I had a summer internship working with one of these Gatan PECS system. I used it as a polishing system for EBSD samples. I was using it at very low currents. It kind of works once you get the recipe right for your material system. Thanks for the video!

[@bigdaddycool2564]

This has got to be one of the most INTERESTING videos I've ever seen.

[@Parallellook]

this is some technical achievement in rickrolling

[@AnthonySmith-sc4zs]

If you’re super unlucky, then when you set your alarm to 8:45, you go to the size of atomic level at random TV pops up in front of you and shows rickroll dance

[@ghosttwo2]

Whenever I see setups like this, I wonder if you have a vacuum buffer, or if that's even a thing. My idea is to have a tank several times larger than the test chamber. When it's time to run the sample, you can purge the test chamber into the vacuum reserve tank (fun to say) to reduce the gas pressure by the volume ratio of the two spaces. Then you'd be able to run a turbo much sooner, or do 90% of the pumping in the first couple of seconds. A separate pump of even mediocre grade can prime the tank again, while the main system runs on it's own; it doesn't even affect run times. You could even pipe it out to multiple locations, with check valves for sudden pressure failures. Cheap video idea, but more runs per day sounds better too.

[@Henriiyy]

Are these circular marks on the etched surface (especially visible on the Diamond) the impact craters of single argon atoms? I find that somehow hard to imagine, they look pretty large.

[@BreakingTaps]

I think that's a mix of crystal orientation and local topography. Different crystal orientations of a material will etch at different rates, so big hunk of diamond for example will be a mixture of different "grains" (unless it's monocrystalline diamond). And some of those grains will etch faster, leading to a pit. And local topography can affect it too. If there is an existing pit, that'll tend to grow faster than a flat area (more surface area to get etched). Or if one region is facing the beam a bit more, it'll etch faster. Ditto to impurities that might etch faster. So yeah, it's a combination of stuff, but definitely not individual impact craters. Too large as you said! 👍

[@FriendlyCynic]

This is super interesting and neat to see. But to be honest, the part I'm most curious about is HOW they were developed. Like for example, the Magnetron... How do you discover that if you shoot electrons in a single direction, get them to start spiraling, and put them next to specifically sized cavities, electric fields will start to oscillate at a desired frequency and emit EM waves of that frequency?

[@andymouse]

Witchcraft.

[@L33tSkE3t]

This video was incredibly well done and brilliantly articulated. I’m not an expert in any of what is being discussed but, I at no point felt overwhelmed by the information being discussed.

[@TheEmptyHoliness]

This is one of the coolest things i’ve seen. Thank you for this video!!

[@JuliusBurton]

What hardware/software are you using for the electron microscope? How does it zoom in like that. Is it moving and re photographing/scanning the sample every time you zoom in? Or is it just one super high res image that loads different parts after you zoom in on them?

[@sebastjansslavitis3898]

it doesn't sound like science fiction, it sounds like small plasma cutter

[@siebenhens]

If you put the sample at a very shallow angle to the beam, you can do very fine polishing to reveal crystal sturctures, nano-porous features, etc. Pretty cool technology!

[@AdrianTechWizard]

I thought that you weren't supposed to run turbomolecular pumps in atmosphere, the pressure should be lowered with the roughing pump first to prevent damage.

[@150Gianluca]

Your microscopy is incredible

[@andymouse]

At work I had a lot of options from 'wrecking Ball' Caesium Ion Sources to very energetic Oxygen Ion sources (which ate filaments !) down to very light Ion's. We had a FAB process (Fast Atom Bombardment) where we set up the Ion beam focus and all that good stuff then passed it through a charge exchange cell (more gas) and you end up with a neutral beam. This was great as one of my favourite studies was 'Depth profiling using Ion Milling to dig the hole, fascinating when using complementary techniques of analysis (SIMS or ESCA) and working your way through a piece of magnetic tape from a video cassette looking at the best bit, and that was the 'Interfaces' of the various layers. This is a stunning video so Kudos there ! and there aren't enough channels for us ' Nano Nerds' anyway !!...cheers.

[@payncraft2523]

Actually electrons dont fly until they hit an argon atom. The internal is anode, or positive. The argon hits the anode, and an electron is lost, making it a positively charged argon ion. Making it repelled by the anode, and attracted to the cathode. The magnets keep the ions centered with the beam outlet. The combination of repellant and attraction, along with mag enduced spin, creates an ion slingshot effect, whipping them past the edges of the cathode, with great force, and balancing energy through acceleration, friction, heat, potential sparks, and a dim plasma like blue luminescence

[@Green_Phos]

It's incredible how those etched microchips looked like alien city-scapes. I could imagine some kind Giger-esque figures coming and going along the "streets" or in and out of the "buildings". Honestly, I could watch those close up pictures/videos for hours.

[@johnsmith1474]

A+ clear informative script writing, my respect for that.

[@TheAces1979]

The cutaway animation is top shelf editing! Strong work!

[@jonathanlapierre8620]

Where was this channel all my life!!!!!!? I felt transported for a minute. Thank you for this amazing content!

[@rust_embedded]

Amazing t-shirt! 🦀

[@BreakingTaps]

🦀🦀🦀

[@oliverer3]

You keep making me want new fancy toys that in reality I have no use for but like how could I not want something as cool as an ion mill?

[@burnbabyburn-od5sy]

how to trust a machine that thinks dimonds are the hardest thing around when it is not.

[@YPOC]

I used to work in a lab where we prepared samples of films used inside batteries with ion beam etching. For this we made super high aspect ratio cross sections of that film, up to 200:1 so they could be studied in an transmission SEM. A nice trick was that the etching could also be done inside the SEM, which is great news, because it was near impossible to take the samples out of the SEM without them blowing away at the lightest breeze because they were so tiny.

[@BreakingTaps]

Oh wow, that's a huge aspect ratio!

[@yerkeruiter]

4:28 LOL 2 of the simulated atoms decided to orbit each other, marvelous.

[@vibrolax]

I (and two other engineers) built a two axis ion milling machine in 1995 for computer controlled figuring of optics for semiconductor production. I did the software and process development for both metrology and figuring. Some optical glasses are very heat sensitive, so it was necessary to limit beam energy. Also, maintaining a constant ion beam shape and current over many hours was quite challenging.

[@BreakingTaps]

Oh wow, super cool! Yeah I can imagine making the process reliable and repeatible is really challenging. My machine is very fiddly and easy to go from a beam that is over-etching to one that extinguishes itself. I can't imagine the engineering needed to make the system work reliably. Really neat project, especially in the 90's!

[@vibrolax]

@@BreakingTaps You've got to maintain a good vacuum with no contaminants. Filament burns out quickly otherwise. I used a 4 variable partial factorial experimental design to get the 2 electrode currents and 2 argon flow rates to optimize the stability and gaussian shape of the beam. There were trade-offs between maximum removal rate and shape/stability. The latter is more important. The better the beam matches the model, the faster the part will converge to the desired shape. Oh yeah, pitch polished glass has different surface layer characteristics for a few 10's of nanometers than the underlying bulk material. So the removal rate on the first run of a pitch polished surface tended to be low. So you needed to be careful as the removal rate often increased after the surface layer was removed. Even so, removal rate was hard to predict, and had to be measured in process on each workpiece. We needed to hit surface shape uncertainty around 2 nm rms.

[@EduardRitok]

3:56 I love that accidental twin star orbit animation 😅

[@schlumpfgangster6522]

Sometimes I think there is a guy working at youtube specifically selecting and recommending the best videos and channels for my personal benefit. Great video.

[@PleakeCrions]

That is an insanely cool machine. Can’t wait to see what you do with it in the future

[@newtonchutney]

Is the crab I see on your tee, Ferris the Rustacean? 😂 🦀

[@BreakingTaps]

It is! 🦀🦀🦀

[@newtonchutney]

​@@BreakingTapshow'd you come across Rust, and where have you used it? 😂

[@xFrizix]

Ferris! 🦀

[@BreakingTaps]

🦀🦀🦀

[@philouzlouis2042]

Hi Breaking Taps, Super nice and interesting video. Just a simple question-idea. I'm a (bio) chemical engineer specialized in organic chemistry, but I do love technology. Into chemistry, it is wel known that gases average (quadratic) speed depends on atomic mass; so hydrogen diatomic gas (H2) moves faster than Helium, than dichlorine (Cl2) or than SF4; and speed depends also on heat (molecular agitation, and free move traject in Brownian agitation), just like pressure (number of molecular shocks on the wall's surface). So here is my question: You used Argon (MW 39,95); but what if you used Helium (MW 4,00) or Xenon (MW 131,29); whould that mean that those inert gases would be also accelerated to atomic blast; but Helium would be accelerated roughly 10 times kinetically faster (but with different impact force due to F= mass*(impact deceleration)) and Xenon about 5 times slower but much eavier thus providing very interesting different abrasing results than Argon. Regards, PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

[@JB-fh1bb]

6:53 Thank you. The photos are deeply satisfying

[@indridcold8433]

Why is xenon not used, instead. It seems to be a heavier noble gas. Would it be too dense and heavy?

[@BreakingTaps]

Xenon can be used too! You're right, being heavier it works better/faster, and certain processes will use it for that reason. But it's also just more expensive, so argon ends up being cheaper even if you have to run the machine longer

[@whuzzzup]

Your updated title/thumbnail is much better. With the old one I even thought about not clicking on the video.

[@BreakingTaps]

Rad, thanks for the feedback! Title/thumb combos always feels like reading tea leaves, hard to know what's working and what isn't because data is delayed. Can't wait until YT lets us just A/B test them

[@flyguy8791]

The cross sections and animations were amazing! Great work, really helped tell the story of what was going on.

[@Leadvest]

This is one of those concepts you might come up with independently in your college years, and then get stoked when you find out it's already a thing.

[@mightisright]

For some reason, when I was watching this I was thinking "why haven't I seen this in a James Bond movie yet?" Imagine what this would do as a weapon.

[@kingjames4886]

this is essentially how I assumed a sci-fi laser gun would work when I was 12... except much faster.

[@christopherleubner6633]

If you want to etch diamond CBN or anything else that is very hard, add a few percent of either oxygen or hydrogen. The texturixing etch followed by ion implantation is an important step for solar cell manufacture as it greatly increases the surface area of the cell. ❤

[@nicknorthcutt7680]

Wow this is insane!! Ive never seen a more beautiful cross section of a chip before!

[@SupraSav]

If someone showed me videos like these when I was in highschool, I am confident I would have picked a different career path in life.

[@dereknichols3408]

I worked at Intersil, they primarily used acid to etch the wafers, but they did have ion and a Yag lazer

[@tobiasd5235]

Are out there some news about the science magazine? Obviously I am still very interested about it.

[@HamidKarzai]

New knife sharpening goals unlocked

[@justincase5272]

Tip: Find a linear induction and maglev motor bearing for the turbo motor (I'm assuming vacuum motor). It should last a very long time. Like transistor radios, they should become ubiquitous very shortly. About 7-11 levels of contrarotating blades (think planetary gears) should bring you to about a 99.987% vacuum. But why stop there? Between metallic printing and 23 contrarotating blades (yes, all, no stationary, all with electromagnetic (gasp!) planetary gears, the entire system has zero contact friction, albeit some loss due to hysteresis, so it should be darn neigh indestructible, right? Pull the vacuum, stop it off, conduct the experiment, then repeat as necessary, ad infinitum.

[@bits2646]

amazing that you got those chips, it really allows to really demonstrate

[@ShanesGettingHandy]

I am equally - or more - interested in a video about how you fixed all the issues it had. How did you get the turbo pump running?

[@BreakingTaps]

TBH I'm still not entirely sure what was wrong with the turbo. A lot of issues cleared up once I cleaned the vacuum gauge... I suspect it was giving erratic readings and really confusing the simple state machine that runs the machine. Occasionally the pressure gauge would swing wildly, and then the airlock mechanism would actuate which would cause an actual pressure change, etc. So I'm thinking the turbo might have been instructed to turn off because it thought the machine was in a bad state or something.

[@BreakingTaps]

I think it was also overheating a little, since the cooling fan had some bad bearings. Once those were fixed it seemed happier too.

[@mritunjayaparashar7996]

00:50 turbo molecular pumps don’t work unless there is a roughing vacuum in the chamber, your turbo pump controller won’t let your turbo pump’s blades to rotate if you try to power it up at the atmospheric pressure.

[@BreakingTaps]

This machine has a "dumb" turbo controller and will happily spin it up to max RPM (or at least try, and burn out the motor in the process if you let it) 🙂

[@wolpumba4099]

*Summary* *Introduction and Basics of Ion Milling* - 0:00: Introduction to atomic sand blaster (ion Mill) used for various applications like etching computer chips, polishing optics, and metal samples. - 0:21: The ion Mill uses a highly energetic ion beam for etching. - 0:38: Device specifics: turbo pump, vacuum chamber, rough vacuum pump, and turbomolecular pump. - 1:12: Sample sits on a rotating and rocking stage (missing in this machine). - 1:37: Ion gun at the top of the chamber generates ionized particles for etching. - 2:00: Built secondary viewport to observe etching process from two other ion guns. *Mechanics and Physics of Ion Milling* - 2:31: How it works: Ion gun accelerates ionized particles, typically argon, towards the sample. - 3:30: Argon particles gain tremendous kinetic energy, acting as an "atomic sand blaster." - 4:07: Explains sputtering with simulations, not scientifically accurate but illustrates the process. - 4:58: Argon implanting in the sample is an unwanted side effect. - 5:16: Amorphization disrupts the sample’s crystalline structure. - 5:35: Angle of impact, masks, and other variables can change etching outcomes. *Practical Applications and Demonstrations* - 6:01: Practical demonstration: Etched microchips using a titanium shim mask. - 6:46: Heat generated can be substantial, enough to melt materials like aluminum. - 7:14: Tungsten vias are more resistant to ion etching. - 7:36: Main use: Clean cross-sections for microscopy. Shows various detected elements. - 8:07: Discusses silicon nitride passivation layer on microchips. - 8:09: Describes how simple and complex masks can be used. - 8:22: Talks about Electron Beam lithography and aluminum deposition. - 8:30: Notes imperfections but highlights how deposited metal acts as a mask. *Advanced Applications and Materials* - 8:47: Mentions ion milling's use in etching hard-to-etch materials and in ultra-precision optics. - 8:54: Ion milling for polishing telescope mirrors and lenses. - 9:09: Common lab usage is for preparing microscope samples. - 9:39: Ion milling as a gentle approach to smoothing surfaces. - 9:54: Ion milling's material-agnostic etching capabilities. - 10:06: Includes etching diamond as a feat, describes it as an "atomic sand blaster." *Challenges and Troubleshooting* - 11:01: Troubles experienced in getting the ion milling instrument to work. *Closing and Promotion* - 11:36: Segues into a promotional message for Brilliant.org, focusing on problem-solving skills. Disclaimer: I utilized GPT-4 to condense the video transcript into a summary. The original transcript exceeded GPT-4's context length limitations, so I divided it into two segments. For each segment, I employed Prompt 1 to generate timestamped bullet lists. I then used Prompt 2 to organize these lists into sections with titles. The summary was manually formatted using KZbin comment markup. Prompt 1: "Generate a bullet list summary, including starting timestamps for each point." Prompt 2: "Split bullet list into sections. Create section titles. Keep timestamps for the bullets. Use this format for titles: *title*"

[@Lardzor]

I thought sputtering was thin film deposition where you heat a metal to it's boiling point in a vacuum. The boiled off atoms fill the vacuum and condense on whatever they hit creating a film of the boiled material on a sample. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputter_deposition EDIT: I see the term is used for ion etching as well.

[@BreakingTaps]

Yep, same process! Just depends if the thing you're hitting with the ions is the sample (ion milling) or a target that you want to transfer onto the sample (sputter deposition). I'm not sure how clear it is in the video, but there are tons of rainbow patterns on the inside of the vacuum chamber. That's material that was etched/sputtered _off_ of the sample and landed on the chamber as a thin film :)