Patent ID: 8405054

Claim:
A method of charged particle beam processing, comprising: providing an ion beam system having an inert gas supply, an ion source including an RF-excited, impedance matched plasma chamber having substantially no time varying modulation of the plasma arising from the time varying RF-voltage, the inert gas supply being connected to the plasma chamber of the ion source for producing inert gas ions and the ion beam system including focusing optics for forming a beam of inert gas ions extracted from the plasma chamber, and including a gas injection system for introducing an etch or deposition precursor gas into a lower chamber containing a work piece to be processed; causing the inert gas from the inert gas supply to enter the plasma chamber; extracting the beam of inert gas ions from the plasma chamber; causing the etch or deposition precursor gas to be injected into the lower chamber; and processing the work piece using the beam of inert gas ions to decompose the process gas to process the work piece.