Abstract: Microplasmas can be used for a wide range of technological applications and to improve the understanding of fundamental physics. Scanning electron microscopy, on the other hand, provides insights into the sample morphology and chemistry of materials from the mm‐ down to the nm‐scale. Combining both would provide direct insight into plasma‐sample interactions in real‐time and at high spatial resolution. Up till now, very few attempts in this direction have been made, and significant challenges remain. This work presents a stable direct current glow discharge microplasma setup built inside a scanning electron microscope. The experimental setup is capable of real‐time in situ imaging of the sample evolution during plasma operation and it demonstrates localized sputtering and sample oxidation. Further, the experimental parameters such as varying gas mixtures, electrode polarity, and field strength are explored and experimental<italic>V</italic>–<italic>I</italic>curves under various conditions are provided. These results demonstrate the capabilities of this setup in potential investigations of plasma physics, plasma‐surface interactions, and materials science and its practical applications. The presented setup shows the potential to have several technological applications, for example, to locally modify the sample surface (e.g., local oxidation and ion implantation for nanotechnology applications) on the µm‐scale.

Abstract: Supplementary information for the article “In-situ Plasma Studies using a Direct Current Microplasma in a Scanning Electron Microscope” containing the videos of in-situ SEM imaging (mp4 files), raw data/images, and Jupyter notebooks (ipynb files) for data treatment and plots. Link to the preprint: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.15123 Explanation of the data files can be found in the Information.pdf file. The Videos folder contains the in-situ SEM image series mentioned in the paper. If there are any questions/bugs, feel free to contact me at lukas.grunewaldatuantwerpen.be