Solarus 950 Owner’s Manual and User’s Guide
3
Features
The Solarus 950 is unique in automatically managing all critical plasma parame-
ters, offering a reliable one-touch cleaning solution. With this system, every user
can obtain consistent, high quality results.
The Gatan Advanced Plasma System consists of four main elements:
O
plasma recipes
O
hardware
O
electronics
O
software
These elements are integrated into a highly flexible system that allows a great deal
of control over the sample cleaning process.
Plasma Recipes
Gatan provides cleaning recipes developed to maximize contamination removal
rates while minimizing damage to even the thinnest TEM samples. These recipes
have been tuned for efficiency using a mass spectrometer and crystal and thick-
ness monitors, tuned for minimal sputtering and sample damage using Langmuir
probes, and exhaustively verified with TEM and SEM samples in a wide variety
of conditions.
The unique H
2
/O
2
recipe prevents or reduces buildup of contamination after about
one minute of cleaning. Even the worst burned-on contamination takes less than
ten minutes to clean. Holey carbon films have been cleaned in this recipe for more
than nine minutes without damage. Alternate Ar/O
2
(Ar 75% - O
2
25%) recipes
can also be selected.
The two primary gas chemistries used are H
2
/O
2
and Ar/O
2
.
H
2
/O
2
Gatan has found this chemistry to provide superior cleaning rates, less sputtering
damage, and significantly less sample heating than Ar/O
2
over a wide range of
samples.
Ar/O
2
(option)
This is the traditionally used process gas combination in electron microscopy.
Gatan has not yet found a processing advantage to Ar/O
2
over H
2
/O
2
, but some
sites may have restrictions on the use of pure H
2
or O
2
. An optional third mass
flow controller and a supply of Ar 75%/O 25% is required to use this recipe.
The use of this recipe requires optional hardware.
