Question

I have heard helium ion microscopes offer extremely high resolution of features due to the shorter debroglie wavelength of the helium atoms.

Naturally I was curious if anyone has built something using heavier noble gases like a neon ion beam. I suppose such beams could be more likely to damage a lot of materials, at least according to this wikipedia article where it explicitly states In contrast to other ion beams, there is no discernible sample damage due to relatively light mass of the helium ion. but I was curious if for a given noble gas N, there is a set of materials that won't be damaged which could then be photographed using an ion beam made of N and if the resolution of such a microscope accordingly higher?

If, this is possible, then in theory how much smaller can these images get? Would it be possible to get into single picometer scale images?

Answer 1

Heavier noble gases could, theoretically, be used in ion beam microscopes for higher resolution due to shorter wavelengths, but are more likely to cause sample damage. Resolution could potentially reach the picometer scale but is often practically limited by factors such as sample integrity and system aberrations.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question asks about the potential use of heavier noble gases, such as neon, for ion beam microscopes and whether they could achieve higher resolution without damaging materials. Ion beam microscopes like the helium ion microscope offer high resolution imaging due to the shorter de Broglie wavelengths of ions compared to that of visible light in conventional microscopes. Although electrons and helium ions are widely used due to their relatively low mass and consequently lower sample damage, in theory, heavier noble gases could be used to create even shorter wavelength beams and potentially increase resolution further.

However, heavier ions are more likely to cause sample damage, which limits their use in practice. The resolution is fundamentally limited by the wavelength of the probe, and for smaller wavelengths, it's possible that the microscope could resolve features on the picometer scale, although practical constraints such as sample damage and aberrations in the imaging system often pose limits well before these theoretical resolutions.