Chromatic Aberrations in the Field Evaporation Behavior of Small Precipitates

Artifacts in the field evaporation behavior of small precipitates have limited the accuracy of atom probe tomography analysis of clusters and precipitates smaller than 2 nm. Here, we report on specific observations of reconstruction artifacts that were obtained in case of precipitates with radii less than 10 nm in Al alloys, focusing particularly on a shift that appears in the relative positioning of matrix and precipitate atoms. We show that this chemically dependent behavior, referred to as chromatic aberration, is due to the electrostatic field above the emitter and the variations in field evaporation of the elements constituting the precipitates.