Atom probe tomography

Abstract

This introductory tutorial describes the technique of atom probe tomography for materials characterization at the atomic level. The evolution of the technique from the initial atom probe field ion microscope to today's state-of-the-art three dimensional atom probe is outlined. An introduction is presented on the basic physics behind the technique, the operation of the instrument, and the reconstruction of the three-dimensional data. The common methods for analyzing the three-dimensional atom probe data, including atom maps, isoconcentration surfaces, proximity histograms, maximum separation methods, and concentration frequency distributions, are described. © 2009 Elsevier Inc.