Impact of laser pulsing on the reconstruction in an atom probe tomography

The implementation of fast pulsed laser has significantly improved the performance of the atom probe technique by enabling near-atomic-scale three-dimensional analysis of poorly conducting materials. This has broadened the range of applications for the atom probe, addressing a major limitation of the technique. Despite this, the implications of lasing on the tomographic reconstruction of atom probe data have yet to be fully characterised. Here, we demonstrate how changes in the shape of the specimen surface, induced by laser pulsing, affect the ion trajectories, and hence the projection parameters used to build the three-dimensional map. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.