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Chromatic Aberrations in the Field Evaporation Behavior of Small Precipitates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2008

Emmanuelle A. Marquis*
Affiliation:
Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PH, United Kingdom Materials Physics Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
Francois Vurpillot
Affiliation:
Groupe de Physique des Matériaux, UMR CNRS 6634, Institut des Matériaux de Rouen, 76801 Saint Etienne du Rouvray Cedex, France
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: emmanuelle.marquis@materials.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

Artifacts in the field evaporation behavior of small precipitates have limited the accuracy of atom probe tomography analysis of clusters and precipitates smaller than 2 nm. Here, we report on specific observations of reconstruction artifacts that were obtained in case of precipitates with radii less than 10 nm in Al alloys, focusing particularly on a shift that appears in the relative positioning of matrix and precipitate atoms. We show that this chemically dependent behavior, referred to as “chromatic aberration,” is due to the electrostatic field above the emitter and the variations in field evaporation of the elements constituting the precipitates.

Type
Microanalysis
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2008

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References

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