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Microscopy Milestones: Field Ion Microscopy, Atom Probe Field Ion Microscopy and Atom Probe Tomography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

M. K. Miller
Affiliation:
Metals and Ceramics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN37831-6376
J. A. Panitz
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM87131-1156
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Extract

Two of the most significant microscopy milestones that were achieved in the last century were the imaging of individual atoms and the identification of individual atoms. Both these remarkable achievements were due to Prof. E. W. Miiller and members of his group at Pennsylvania State University. Almost fifty years ago, Miiller introduced a new type of microscope in which a sharp needle-shaped specimen was pointed at a fluorescent screen, Fig. 1. By applying an appropriately high positive voltage to the specimen, image gas atoms near the apex of the specimen could be ionized and radially projected towards the screen where they produced highly magnified images of the specimen surface, Fig. 2. By cryogenically cooling the specimen and using helium as the image gas, the first images of individual atoms were obtained in a field ion microscope by Bahadur and Müller on October 11th, 1955.

Type
Microscopy Milestones of the Last Millenium
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America

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References

Miiller, E. W., Z. Physik, 31 (1951) 136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miiller, E. W., Panitz, J., McLane, S. B., Rev. Sci. Instr., 39 (1968) 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panitz, J. A., Rev. Sci. Instrum., 44 (1973) 1034.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, M. K., paper presented at the Microbeam Analysis Society, Meeting, Albuquerque, NM, 1986,Google Scholar
Research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory SHaRE User Facility was sponsored by the Division of Materials Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC05-96OR22464 with Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corporation.Google Scholar