Broadening the applications of the atom probe technique by ultraviolet femtosecond laser

K Hono; T Ohkubo; Y M Chen; M Kodzuka; K Oh-ishi; H Sepehri-Amin; F Li; T Kinno; S Tomiya; Y Kanitani

doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2010.11.020

Broadening the applications of the atom probe technique by ultraviolet femtosecond laser

Ultramicroscopy. 2011 May;111(6):576-83. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2010.11.020. Epub 2010 Dec 2.

Authors

K Hono¹, T Ohkubo, Y M Chen, M Kodzuka, K Oh-ishi, H Sepehri-Amin, F Li, T Kinno, S Tomiya, Y Kanitani

Affiliation

¹ National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba 305-0047, Japan. kazuhiro.hono@nims.go.jp

PMID: 21177036
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2010.11.020

Abstract

Laser assisted field evaporation using ultraviolet (UV) wavelength gives rise to better mass resolution and signal-to-noise ratio in atom probe mass spectra of metals, semiconductors and insulators compared to infrared and green lasers. Combined with the site specific specimen preparation techniques using the lift-out and annular Ga ion milling in a focused ion beam machine, a wide variety of materials including insulating oxides can be quantitatively analyzed by the three-dimensional atom probe using UV laser assisted field evaporation. After discussing laser irradiation conditions for optimized atom probe analyses, recent atom probe tomography results on oxides, semiconductor devices and grain boundaries of sintered magnets are presented.