Assessment of the Tomographic Atom Probe Technique for Nanoscale Characterization : Comparison with SIMS Technique

Abstract

The three dimensional Atom Probe (3D-AP) technique can be considered as the only technique which allows 3D imaging and chemical composition measurements capabilities at the atomic. Since its early developments, 3D Atom Probe has provided major contributions in materials science [1]. Nowadays, the introduction of a femto laser pulsed beam for producing the atom field evaporation has extended the field of investigation of 3D-AP to poor conductive materials [2]. It is now possible due to LASER pulsing to investigate semi-conductor with Tomographic Atom Probe Technique. Therefore, because of the atomic resolution of the technique, Semi-Conductor engineering community has developed a growing interest for the attractive analytical capability of the TAP technique. However, it must be confirmed that the instrument sensitivity and performance will allow to measure dopants distribution in very small structures at the atomic scale resolution.