"We are extremely pleased to have achieved this remarkable milestone in history: initiating a new era in microscopy by shipping the world's first commercial helium ion microscope," said Dirk Stenkamp, member of the Carl Zeiss SMT executive board. "The fact that this instrument has been shipped to a selected customer before its official market introduction later this year clearly reveals the demand for this breakthrough technology. We are especially pleased that the first ORION microscope is destined for the NIST laboratories where research at the limits of physics is carried out on a daily basis."

According to Carl Zeiss SMT, this new breed of microscope is expected to provide images of unrivalled ultra-high resolution surface and material contrast, unachievable with state-of-the-art technologies of today.

The microscope uses a beam of Helium ions, which can be focused into a smaller probe size and reveal a much stronger sample interaction compared to electrons typically used in scanning electron microscopes (SEM), to generate the signals to be measured and imaged.

Bill Ward, principal inventor of the Helium ion microscope, founder of ALIS Corporation and Chief Technologist at Carl Zeiss SMT Inc., said, "This breakthrough in physics comes just in time. Today's scientists are facing problems they can't solve because they can't see what they need to see. In addition, traditional procedures for sample preparation are slow, tedious and imprecise. Fortunately, the ORION microscope addresses these issues and will enable further scientific advancements in a large number of fields, such as semiconductor process control, life science applications and materials analysis."

The ORION microscope is being delivered to the Precision Engineering Division of the NIST Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory and will be installed in the Advanced Measurement Laboratory (AML).