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Atom-probe tomography (APT) is finally coming of age, after a long gestation period, because of the
availability of reliable and well-engineered commercial instruments and data analysis software, which
are both robust and ergonomic. APT is an analytical technique based on the field-induced evaporation
of atoms as cations and their subsequent detection on a position sensitive detector, equipped with a
time-of-flight mass spectrometer. It is the only technique capable of generating three-dimensional
(3D) atom-by-atom images of the internal structure of materials and devices with a supreme mass-
resolving power and sub-nm spatial resolution. In this presentation, I will describe the underlying
physics of laser-assisted field evaporation which is the cornerstone of APT analysis. To amplify on
this point, I will discuss the use of APT to achieve 3-D atomic maps of emerging epitaxial group IV
semiconductors [1-5]. This includes isotopically engineered nanoscale and quantum materials,
superlattices, metal-catalyzed nanowires, and GeSn/SiGeSn metastable semiconductors.
References
1. S.Mukherjee et al, Nano Letters 15,6 (2015), 3885-3893
2. S.Mukherjee et al, under review (Nano Letters)
3. S.Mukherjee et al, PRB (Rapid Communication), 95, (2017), 161402
4. S.Mukherjee et al, Nano Letters 16, 2 (2016), 1335-1344
5. D. Jung, J. Faucher, S. Mukherjee et al., Nature Communications 8, (2017) 14204. |