A new approach to the determination of concentration profiles in atom probe tomography.
Atom probe tomography (APT) provides three-dimensional analytical imaging of materials with near-atomic resolution using pulsed field evaporation. The processes of field evaporation can cause atoms to be placed at positions in the APT reconstruction that can deviate slightly from their original site in the material. Here, we describe and model one such process--that of preferential retention of solute atoms in multicomponent systems. Based on relative field evaporation probabilities, we calculate the point spread function for the solute atom distribution in the "z," or in-depth direction, and use this to extract more accurate solute concentration profiles.
Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, Madsen Building F09, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Camperdown, Australia. peter.felfer@sydney.edu.au
Peter J
PJ
Felfer
Baptiste
B
Gault
Gang
G
Sha
Leigh
L
Stephenson
Simon P
SP
Ringer
Julie M
JM
Cairney