Progress on three-dimensional observation and in situ observation using scanning ion microscopy

The progress on the focused ion beam fabrication method provides us several kinds of advanced techniques for the sample preparation of transmission electron microscopy. With improvement of the beam convergence and the increase of the ion accelerating voltage, the ability of its scanning ion microscope becomes glade up with a good image resolution. The scanning ion microscope is now powerful tool to investigate the three dimensional microstructure to cut and view in any places under the observation and recently the FIB serial sectioning method is developed to one of the method to reconstruct the 3D image in the computer using a series of sliced cross sectioning images, in the research filed of steel microstructure. As another application filed of the scanning ion microscopy, the high temperature in situ observation technique has been developed, and the melting behavior of metal particles have been observed.