Atom Probe Tomography at The University of Sydney

Summary: The Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF) operates a national atom probe laboratory at The University of Sydney. This paperprovides a brief review and update of the technique of atom probe tomography (APT),together with a summary of recent research applications at Sydney in the scienceand technology of materials. We describe recent instrumentation advances such asthe use of laser pulsing to effect time-controlled field evaporation, the introductionof wide field of view detectors, where the solid angle for observation is increased byup to a factor of ∼20 as well as innovations in specimen preparation. We concludethat these developments have opened APT to a range of new materials that werepreviously either difficult or impossible to study using this technique because of theirpoor conductivity or brittleness