edfas.org 25 ELECTRONIC DEV ICE FA I LURE ANALYSIS | VOLUME 25 NO . 1 business. She advised us that, counterintuitively, the best time to start a company is during a downturn. This turned out to be good advice. Tom took the leap despite the risk. It allowedOmniprobe time to ramp, so that when the market picked up, Omniprobe was ready to hit the ground running. Tom submitted his resignation to TI on September 10, 2001. The very next morning, we and everyone else in the world woke up to 9/11—an unprecedented attack, on top of an already stressed market reeling from the dot-com crash. Tom again sweated the decision to leave a secure management positionwith TI. Fortunately for the electron microscopyworld, he continued to pursue his dream. Tom did leave TI that year, and Rocky and I eventually followed some years later according to our own timelines. Omniprobe’s first lift-out patent issued in 2002,[20] followed shortlyby theTotal Releasepatent.[21] To fully enable the lift-out workflow, Tom and I invented the Omniprobe in situ lift-out grids (Fig. 8). The approach of cutting a grid in half with a razor blade was fast and cheap but caused all kinds of subsequent problems after it was put into the TEM. Often the cut ends were at strange angles and positions that did not allow a TEMmicroscopist to align to the zone axis. And hand cutting grids all the time was a pain. They were fragile and easily damaged. The Omniprobe grids retained a “V” structure to mimic the one used originally with the cut cross-hatch grids. Some straight bars were added as well. Tom realized the company logo could be etched into the grid. By this time Omniprobe added staff and some felt the lift-out grids should bemade available only toOmniprobe customers. I advocated to supply to the open market, and Tom agreed. The grids became Omniprobe’s best source of advertising, and by enabling the entire workflow to approach reaching 100% success rates, secured the growth and adoption of in situ lift-out techniques across the microscopy industry. When we invented the grids, the main goal was to complete the workflow to enable manipulator sales. An unintended and surprising consequence was that years later, the grids themselves were sold at volumes that contributed significant revenue. Innovations at Omniprobe continued, thanks to the talented Omniprobe team. In 2007, the year I left TI for full-timeOmniprobework, automated lift-out had already been proven on both of Omniprobe’s Zeiss Crossbeam 1540 and FEI 835 microscopes. The invention of the ninth generation of nanomanipulators in 2012 led to evenmore robust and precise nanomanipulation applications, with 10 nm encoders enabling true nanomanipulation. We were able to selectively target and remove a 60 nm diameter ZnO nanowire and transfer it to a support for atom probe analysis, all using only the e-beam.[24] Omniprobe also developed customized lift-out recipes for emerging applications, such as sample preparation for MEMS in situ holders. In 2011, I developed a patented cryo lift-out solution. By 2016, it was fully commercialized through collaboration with customers[14-17] and launched at Microscopy & Microanalysis (M&M) 2016, leading to the world’s first publication analyzing the solid-liquid electrolyte interface in a battery.[18] With good control and performance of the cryo cooling hardware, unintended growth of amorphous ice in the chamber was not an issue and the Omniprobe “ice lift-out”methodwas used reproducibly at three different labs having very different equipment configurations. That wasmy last Omniprobe project before pursuing new opportunities and leaving the technology in the capable hands of Oxford Instruments, who acquired Omniprobe in 2011. EPILOGUE When we started Omniprobe, we never doubted for a moment that in situ lift-out would transform the industry. The question was, “Who would develop it first?” Would we taste the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat? We were right to be concerned. Hitachi presented their new microsampling method at ISTFA 1999[25] and commercially released their lift-out solution coincident with Omniprobe’s first sale toMonica. I recall sitting in disbelief the day after that installation, listening to Hitachi's ISTFA talk. We thought wewere first in theworld to commercialize in situ lift-out and found that wewere tiedwith another. Time to market matters, and the closure of CRL had cost us valuable time. As we learned years later, many others were working to develop lift-out solutions. Additionally, there were multiple publications on ex situ lift-out that had occurred in this early timeframe.[26-29] Fig. 8 A Cu Omniprobe lift-out grid, also known as a “half grid.” Lift-out samples may be placed on top of the “V” post at A or D positions, on top of the straight posts at B and C, or attached to the side of any post.
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