Interpreting nanovoids in atom probe tomography data for accurate local compositional measurements

Xing Wang; Constantinos Hatzoglou; Brian Sneed; Zhe Fan; Wei Guo; Ke Jin; Di Chen; Hongbin Bei; Yongqiang Wang; William J. Weber; Yanwen Zhang; Baptiste Gault; Karren L. More; Francois Vurpillot; Jonathan D. Poplawsky

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14832-w

Interpreting nanovoids in atom probe tomography data for accurate local compositional measurements

Xing Wang, Constantinos Hatzoglou, Brian Sneed, Zhe Fan, Wei Guo, Ke Jin, Di Chen, Hongbin Bei, Yongqiang Wang, William J. Weber, Yanwen Zhang, Baptiste Gault, Karren L. More, Francois Vurpillot, Jonathan D. Poplawsky

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

40 Scopus citations

Abstract

Quantifying chemical compositions around nanovoids is a fundamental task for research and development of various materials. Atom probe tomography (APT) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) are currently the most suitable tools because of their ability to probe materials at the nanoscale. Both techniques have limitations, particularly APT, because of insufficient understanding of void imaging. Here, we employ a correlative APT and STEM approach to investigate the APT imaging process and reveal that voids can lead to either an increase or a decrease in local atomic densities in the APT reconstruction. Simulated APT experiments demonstrate the local density variations near voids are controlled by the unique ring structures as voids open and the different evaporation fields of the surrounding atoms. We provide a general approach for quantifying chemical segregations near voids within an APT dataset, in which the composition can be directly determined with a higher accuracy than STEM-based techniques.

Original language	English
Article number	1022
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	11
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14832-w
State	Published - Dec 1 2020

Funding

This work was supported by the Energy Dissipation to Defect Evolution (EDDE) Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. Electron microscopy and APT were conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a US DOE Office of Science User Facility. Helium implantations were supported by the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a DOE Office of Science user facility jointly operated by Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. Nickel irradiations were performed at the Ion Beam Materials Laboratory (IBML, https://ibml.utk.edu/) located on the campus of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. We acknowledge the financial support of the Region Normandie–FEDER and ANR / EMC3 Labex, DYNAMITE project and support from Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) under task ID 2679.001 for the field-evaporation simulation. We thank James Burns for assistance with sample preparation and running the APT experiments.

Funders	Funder number
DOE Office of Science
EMC3 Labex
Region Normandie
US Department of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Semiconductor Research Corporation	2679.001
Office of Science	KC0403040, FWP ERKCZ01
Basic Energy Sciences	DE-AC05-00OR22725
Sandia National Laboratories
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies
Agence Nationale de la Recherche
European Regional Development Fund

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abstract = "Quantifying chemical compositions around nanovoids is a fundamental task for research and development of various materials. Atom probe tomography (APT) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) are currently the most suitable tools because of their ability to probe materials at the nanoscale. Both techniques have limitations, particularly APT, because of insufficient understanding of void imaging. Here, we employ a correlative APT and STEM approach to investigate the APT imaging process and reveal that voids can lead to either an increase or a decrease in local atomic densities in the APT reconstruction. Simulated APT experiments demonstrate the local density variations near voids are controlled by the unique ring structures as voids open and the different evaporation fields of the surrounding atoms. We provide a general approach for quantifying chemical segregations near voids within an APT dataset, in which the composition can be directly determined with a higher accuracy than STEM-based techniques.",

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AU - Wang, Xing

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AU - Chen, Di

AU - Bei, Hongbin

AU - Wang, Yongqiang

AU - Weber, William J.

AU - Zhang, Yanwen

AU - Gault, Baptiste

AU - More, Karren L.

AU - Vurpillot, Francois

AU - Poplawsky, Jonathan D.

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Interpreting nanovoids in atom probe tomography data for accurate local compositional measurements

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