Born with the Laboratoire de microstructures et de microélectroniques (L2M-CNRS) in Bagneux in the 1990s, R&D efforts on liquid metal ion sources have been methodically pursued and strengthened by bringing together around C2N's Plateforme Instrumentation et Sources d'Ions a compact team and a range of study equipment and technologies that are unique in their field. Initially, the team's efforts were exclusively devoted to developing FIB (Focused Ion Beam) technology, a very popular, particularly versatile and powerful technique widely used in the inspection of components and integrated circuits manufactured by the semiconductor industry. The team has opened up new horizons with the use of alternative ionic species that enable bottom-up approaches involving the growth or agglomeration of atoms or particles around a locally induced nucleus. These latest advances promise to open up new prospects for nanotechnologies.
In recent years, the team has been involved in the development of space propulsion technologies at the invitation of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), technologies still based on the principle of field-effect emission of fast ions. The team has filed several patents to date.
Instrumentation Platform
GIERAK Jacques - Research engineer CNRS (Group leader)
ABRUNHOSA Sofia - Research engineer CNRS (CDD)
FRANÇOIS Léonard - Research engineer CNRS (CDD)
RAYNAUD Gilles - Research Professor (Emeritus)
Nanofabrication
The team has built a set of equipment and a unique ‘FIB Nanowriter’ facility that defines the state of the art in terms of engineering. This technology is based on an in-depth understanding of the physics of high-brightness ion emitters, which has been followed by their application to direct nanowriting. The beauty of this approach lies in the fact that, on a scale of around ten nanometres, it enables the intensity of the ion-matter interaction to be controlled over almost 6 orders of magnitude, from very low doses with the generation of surface defects, to localised mixing of thin layers, culminating in localised etching.
A strong partnership was formed in 2002 between our team and Raith GmbH, a world leader in lithography instruments. This company's FIB tools are based on the unique Gallium ion beam generation technologies developed by and in our C2N team. More than twenty years after the first exchanges, the mutual benefits of this lively collaboration are still being shared, with new projects in the pipeline.
Space Propulsion
Thanks to the knowledge acquired over decades of FIB research, particularly in the production of ion sources of the highest quality in terms of spatial and temporal stability, the team has begun to use the same physical principles, but now oriented towards space propulsion. This approach has been supported by a collaborative programme with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), in particular on liquid ion thrusters (ILT), which exploit the same basic physics as liquid metal ion sources (LMIS), but using a non-toxic liquid salt at room temperature.
Following this development, a start-up company, ION-X, was created to develop this new technology. The start-up was supported by a joint effort from CNRS and its partner TechnoFounders. Its level of performance in terms of weight/power ratio and endurance makes it ideally suited to the new smaller satellites (1-300 kg), when used in a multi-emitter system. To meet the requirements of other space players, notably Airbus Defense and Space, for deep space missions and propulsion of heavier satellites, a similar technology targeting higher thrust values (>100 µN/cm²) has been developed. This has been supported by a joint effort from CNES and CNRS Innovation (France Relance - PSM Widerange and CNRS Prematuration HFire projects).
Key Figures
Collaborations
News
