Supply and maintenance of a dual beam plasma Focused Ion Beam – Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope

Item Description:

The European Commission is an institution of the European Union, responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the EU.

The European Commission, Directorate General Joint Research Centre, (referred to below as the contracting authority) is planning to award the contract resulting from the above procurement procedure. The procurement documents consist of the contract notice, the invitation letter, the draft contract and tender specifications with their annexes. All documents are enclosed in the attached ZIP File.

In order to perform in-situ large area contamination-free sample preparation and high resolution imaging and analysis, the JRC Petten plans to purchase a dual beam microscope (pFIB-SEM) featuring a Xenon plasma as ion beam source (pFIB) and a field emission electron beam as source for electron imaging. The pFIB/SEM infrastructure will support scientific activities in nuclear safety and in medical applications of nuclear science. For that purpose, the system will include energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and scanning-transmission electron microscope (STEM) detectors and allow micromachining of micromechanical specimens, TEM lamellae preparation of hard and soft materials, and 3D reconstructions of analysed volumes. The choice for a plasma ion source instead of the most common liquid metal ion source derives from the need to avoid metal contamination due to ion implantation during sample preparation (fabrication of micro-specimens or TEM lamellae).

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