Nanostructured Materials Studied by Means of the Computed Field Ion Image Tomography (CFIIT)

摘要

Exploring the morphology of 3-dimensional structures in nano-crystalline materials, exhibiting grain sizes of 10 to 20 nm, still represent a significant challenge in materials science. Despite their high resolution on the nanometre scale, still both TEM (HREM) and TAP show in special cases, some significant drawbacks to elucidate these structures in a statistical manner. Therefore a new technique was developed to augment and complement the possibilities of the analysis by TEM and atom probe tomography. Basing on the FIM, the computed Field Ion Image Tomography (cFIIT) uses stacked field ion micrographs to reconstruct volumes [1], which are 10{sup}2 to 10{sup}3 times larger with respect to the TAP [2]. Thus the cFIIT for the first time allows analysing nanostructures with structural features exceeding the volume of analysis from the TAP in a statistically relevant way, even though the chemical information, which can be derived by TAP, cannot be fully obtained in a cFIIT analysis.