Photo-ionization is applied to a laser cooled and compressed atomic rubidium\u3cbr/\u3ebeam in order to generate a high brightness ion beam. When focused, this ion beam can be used to image and edit integrated circuits at the nano-scale which is important for the ongoing reduction of feature sizes in the semiconductor industry. Experiments have shown that an atomic beam brightness in excess of 106 A/(m2 sr eV) can be achieved with a flux equivalent to 500 pA in a compact magneto-optical compressor which should be sufficient to generate ion spots of 1 nm. Currently, photo-ionization experiments are being carried out that aim at ionizing the majority of the atoms within a small longitudinal\u3cbr/\u3erange in order to minimize the longitudinal energy spread. The two step ionization setup uses a tightly focused excitation laser beam and a powerful blue laser coupled to a build-up-cavity
