Ritter, MartinMartinRitterMidgley, P. A.P. A.Midgley2023-01-052023-01-052010-08-09Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group Conference (EMAG 2009)http://hdl.handle.net/11420/14511State-of-the-art focused ion beam (FIB) instruments have an ion column for sample modification and an electron column for scanning electron microscopy (SEM). 3D reconstruction of a sample volume can be achieved by serial sectioning using the FIB in combination with high-resolution SEM imaging of each cross-section. Usually, the resolution in the direction in which the sections are milled (z-direction) is much lower than in the plane of the cross-section (xy-direction) itself. Increased sampling in the z-direction can only be achieved by decreasing the distance between single sections. For a constant volume this is equivalent to increasing the number of sections, i.e. time and effort. To perform efficient 3D reconstructions the effect of the reduced sampling in the z-direction to the overall accuracy of the 3D reconstruction has to be known. We tested this approach with FIB conical test structures that were slice-and-view processed and subsequently reconstructed. Using a reference data set with a slice thickness (z-resolution) of 22 nm, data with z-resolutions ranging from 44 nm to 440 nm were created and reconstructed with commercial software. The calculated volumes for the simulated z-resolutions and their deviations from the reference volume are shown. Deviations of up to 35% occur and reach about 10% once the z-resolution was one fifth of the upper diameter of the conical structures.en1742-65962010Conference Paper10.1088/1742-6596/241/1/012081Conference Paper