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APFIM Studies of Interfaces: Structure and Composition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Hans Nordén
Hans Nordén*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden
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Extract

The distribution of small amounts of alloying elements or impurities to interfaces can have a major influence on the properties of a material and the atom probe field ion microscope technique is well suited for the study of such segregation effects, where structural and compositional changes often take place over regions only a few nanometers wide.

Many features of the atom probe technique make it very useful in studies of interfaces:

  1. i) high spatial resolution, about lnm laterally and 0.2 nm in depth

  2. ii) equal sensitivity for all elements, including the lightest

  3. iii) no specimen contamination, surface artifacts from the specimen preparation are removed by field evaporation,

  4. iv) low temperature operation, negligible diffusion during analysis

A ncessary prerequisite for any systematic analysis is the ability to prepare suitable specimens. The volume accessible for analysis by APFIM is orders of magnitude smaller than a typical grain size, so a specimen preparation technique was developed that could bring features of interest sufficiently close to the apex (see Fig. la).

Type
Imaging and Analysis at the Atomic Level: 30 Years of Atom Probe Field Ion Microscopy
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 4 , Issue S2: Proceedings: Microscopy & Microanalysis '98, Microscopy Society of America 56th Annual Meeting, Microbeam Analysis Society 32nd Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia July 12-16, 1998 , July 1998 , pp. 114 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America

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References

1.Loberg, B. and Nordén, H.. Ark. för Fys. 40 (1970) 513.Google Scholar
2.Lai, Z. and Nordén, H.. J. de Physique 49-C6 (1988) 341Google Scholar
3.Karlsson, L. and Nordén, H.. Acta Metall. 36 (1988) 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4.Foiles, S.M. and Seidman, D.N.. in Wolf, D. and Yip, S., Ed., Materials Interfaces, London Chapman & Hall (1992) 497Google Scholar