Single-Ion Deconvolution of Mass Peak Overlaps for Atom Probe Microscopy

Due to the intrinsic evaporation properties of the material studied, insufficient mass-resolving power and lack of knowledge of the kinetic energy of incident ions, peaks in the atom probe mass-to-charge spectrum can overlap and result in incorrect composition measurements. Contributions to these peak overlaps can be deconvoluted globally, by simply examining adjacent peaks combined with knowledge of natural isotopic abundances. However, this strategy does not account for the fact that the relative contributions to this convoluted signal can often vary significantly in different regions of the analysis volume; e.g., across interfaces and within clusters. Some progress has been made with spatially localized deconvolution in cases where the discrete microstructural regions can be easily identified within the reconstruction, but this means no further point cloud analyses are possible. Hence, we present an ion-by-ion methodology where the identity of each ion, normally obscured by peak overlap, is resolved by examining the isotopic abundance of their immediate surroundings. The resulting peak-deconvoluted data are a point cloud and can be analyzed with any existing tools. We present two detailed case studies and discussion of the limitations of this new technique.