Patent ID: 9543117
Date: 2017-01-10
CPC Classifications: B23K,G01N,H01J,H01L

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: disposing a material-specimen in a processing region of a particle beam column and orienting the material-specimen relative to the particle beam column in a first orientation; generating a first surface region of the material-specimen by removing a first material-volume from the material-specimen by particle beam etching using a particle beam generated by the particle beam column, the first material-volume being partially defined by the first surface region, and an angle between a beam direction of the particle beam and a surface normal of the first surface region at an intersection of the particle beam and the first surface region being greater than 80° and less than 90°; disposing the material-specimen in the processing region of the particle beam column and orienting the material-specimen relative to the particle beam column in a second orientation so that an angle between the beam direction of the particle beam and the surface normal of the first surface region at the intersection of the particle beam and the first surface region is less than 70°; and generating a second surface region of the material-specimen by removing a second material-volume from the material-specimen by particle beam etching using the particle beam generated by the particle beam column, the second material-volume being beneath a portion of the first surface region, the second material-volume being partially defined by the second surface region, an angle between the beam direction of the particle beam and a surface normal of the second surface region at an intersection of the particle beam and the second surface region being less than 60°, and the second surface region having a roughness smaller than 0.2 μm.