Novel Environmental TEM Holder for In Situ Research of Nano-Electronic Devices and Energy Materials

The rapid development of in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has become possible due to advancements of the functionalized microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based sample carriers. Nowadays, there exists a great variety of MEMS chips that enable the application of an individual stimulus like thermal, electric, gas, liquid, force, etc. or, usually, a combination of two stimuli. Specifically, multi thermal and electric stimuli have been extensively used to study electronic and energy materials and devices like ferroelectrics, magnetic materials, solid state batteries, thermoelectric, memristors, solar cells and many more.<br/>The study of structure and electrical properties of nano-electronic materials and devices is mainly performed in vacuum. This, however, doesn’t represent real-life working conditions as the presence of oxygen might lead to different behaviour and properties of materials. An environmental TEM can be used to perform an in situ heating and biasing experiments in an atmosphere, but the gas pressure is limited to roughtly 20 mbar which still possess a challenge.<br/>In this work we present the development of a new multi-stimuli environmental TEM sample holder. The holder allows the application of thermal and electrical stimuli in ambient environmental conditions. This is achieved through a newly designed dual chip environmental cell with an increased number of contacts. Additional electrodes on the chip are used to prepare a FIB lamella and to characterize the electrical performance of the sample either in 2- or 4-contact mode. Using a newly developed FIB sample preparation procedure, it is possible to prepare contamination-free samples on gas, heating and biasing chips with no electrical short circuits and minimized leakage currents. This development represents a significant step forward towards the realization of real operational conditions inside the TEM offering the potential to further explore and deeper understand of the real properties of nano-electronic devices and energy related materials.