Horizon 10k Ion Polisher

The Oxford Instruments Horizon 10k Ion Polisher unlocks a new route to repeatable, accurate and efficient sample preparation.

The Ion Polisher enables:

A fast milling speed of 1,000um/h (Si, 8kV)
Minimises thermal damage with the cooling stage
Flat-milling function provided for planar etching
A fast pump/vent time with easy sample loading
Higher front mask usability

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Unlock a new route to repeatable, accurate and efficient sample preparation

The Ion Polisher utilises Argon plasma to etch and prepare both flat and cross-sectional samples. This provides a complementary sample preparation technique that unlocks a new level of analysis for challenging materials.

The easy-to-use sample mounting and intuitive recipe process result in a high level of reproducibility with minimal manual handling. This improves sample preparation throughput and removes human error when working with soft/challenging materials.

Phase and Orientation maps for a uniform single phase steel sample. The Phase map shows minimal induced phase change in the Steel grains (red) and a high level of indexing.

Minimise phase changes in sensitive samples

This process gives a true representation of materials whilst avoiding sample deformation, structural damage and contamination.

The improved sensitivity enables:

Analysis of beam sensitive materials
Increased spatial resolution due to reduced probe current
Higher throughput for existing analysis

Ion Polishing can return significantly larger samples when compared to traditional FIB sample preparation

A new sample preparation technique

Easily refine, optimize and save recipes
Consistent sample preparation every time for quality control
Prepare beam sensitive and hard to prepare materials in one step without any water-based solutions; ideal for Li based samples
Include as a final preparation step for High-Resolution EBSD
Rejuvenate old samples or correct bad preparation
Transition effortlessly between the ion-beam polisher and your SEM and find your region of interest immediately
Typical sample prep time 45 mins – 2 hours

Applications

Our high temperature EBSD solution can also be used in combination with our EDS IR filter, enabling a full characterisation of the microstructure and chemistry of the material. The IR filter unlocks EDS high temperature analysis which is crucial to understanding phenomena like precipitation, phase transformation, diffusion, and segregation in a large range of materials like metals, alloys, ceramics, composites, and polymers. It can also be used in combination with EBSD enabling a full characterisation of the microstructure and chemistry of the material.

This example shows a combined high temperature EDS and EBSD experiment in a Fe-Ti alloy. The sample was heated to 900°C and then cooled to 500°C. The video shows a direct observation of Fe diffusing in the matrix and then Ti phase transformation from the alpha to beta phase.

Sample courtesy of Manchester University