Heating stage operation
Make sure water cooling is ON. Close the gate valve between preparation and analysis chambers. Increase the temperature slowly while monitoring the chamber pressure (should not be worse than 1 ✕ 10-7 mbar at any stage, if possible try to maintain better pressure). Once heating cycle is completed, wait for the base pressure to recover before opening the gate valves to the analysis chamber.
Heater control has two modes: auto and manual. In case of auto mode, one can set the desired temperature, current and ramp rate are determined by the controller program. While in case of manual mode, we need to increase the current by hand. It is preferred to use the manual mode, increase the current slowly, while monitoring temperature and chamber pressure.
Our heating system allows both resistive heating and e-beam heating. Note that the temperature sensor is away from the sample position. As a result, the read out temperature is lower than the actual sample temperature. Please refer to this data sheet for more details.
There is specific direction for cooling water flow, the inlet and outlets are clearly marked. Cold water (green pipe) enters the inlet, and hot water (red pipe) comes out of the heating stage.
The filament current direction is not important, the H1 and H2 cables can be interchanged. During e-beam heading the filament receives bias voltage via both (H1 and H2) cables with respect to ground.