Reflections on the Spatial Performance of Atom Probe Tomography in the Analysis of Atomic Neighborhoods

Atom probe tomography (APT) is often introduced as providing “atomic-scale” mapping of the composition of materials and as such is often exploited to analyze atomic neighborhoods within a material. Yet quantifying the actual spatial performance of the technique in a general case remains challenging,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Microscopy and microanalysis Vol. 28; no. 4; pp. 1116 - 1126
Main Authors: Gault, Baptiste, Klaes, Benjamin, Morgado, Felipe F., Freysoldt, Christoph, Li, Yue, De Geuser, Frederic, Stephenson, Leigh T., Vurpillot, François
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.08.2022
Oxford University Press
Subjects:
Atoms & subatomic particles
Condensed Matter
Datasets
Development and Computation
Evaporation
Field ion microscopy
High entropy alloys
Materials Science
Metals
Microscopy
Neighborhoods
Physics
Simulation
Solid solutions
Spatial discrimination
Spatial resolution
Tomography
compositionally complex alloys
nearest neighbors
field evaporation
image simulations
ISSN:1431-9276, 1435-8115, 1435-8115
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Atom probe tomography (APT) is often introduced as providing “atomic-scale” mapping of the composition of materials and as such is often exploited to analyze atomic neighborhoods within a material. Yet quantifying the actual spatial performance of the technique in a general case remains challenging, as it depends on the material system being investigated as well as on the specimen's geometry. Here, by using comparisons with field-ion microscopy experiments, field-ion imaging and field evaporation simulations, we provide the basis for a critical reflection on the spatial performance of APT in the analysis of pure metals, low alloyed systems and concentrated solid solutions (i.e., akin to high-entropy alloys). The spatial resolution imposes strong limitations on the possible interpretation of measured atomic neighborhoods, and directional neighborhood analyses restricted to the depth are expected to be more robust. We hope this work gets the community to reflect on its practices, in the same way, it got us to reflect on our work.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:1431-9276
1435-8115
1435-8115
DOI:10.1017/S1431927621012952