| AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Atom Probe Tomography Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session AP+AS+MC+NS+SS-ThM |
| Session: | APT Analysis of Semiconductors, Magnetic and Oxide Materials |
| Presenter: | Nitesh Madaan, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
| Authors: | N. Madaan, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory A. Devaraj, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Z. Xu, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory M.I. Nandasiri, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory S.A. Thevuthasan, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Atom probe tomography is the state of the art 3D microscopy technique with sub-nanometer scale spatial resolution and ppm level mass sensitivity. For complex heterogeneous materials the accurate artifact-free reconstruction of collected data is quite a challenging task due to varying local evaporation fields leading to non-hemispherical evolution in the tip shape during the APT analysis. In this work we utilized laser assisted APT to analyze alternate multilayer oxide thin film structure of Samaria doped ceria (SDC) and Scandia stabilized zirconia (ScSZ), grown epitaxially on sapphire substrate, which is potentially useful for solid oxide fuel cells due to their high ionic conductivity. By analyzing the sample in different orientations (top-down, side-ways, and back-side) and comparing with dynamic tip shape evolution using level set simulations for similar geometries, an attempt was made to understand and decouple the APT evaporation artifacts from the real physical sample features. This study would help provide insights to improve the APT reconstruction process for complex multi-layered thin film materials.