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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Atom Probe Tomography Studies on the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 Grain Boundaries
Published on: April 22, 2013
Chromatic aberrations in the field evaporation behavior of small precipitates
Emmanuelle A Marquis1, Francois Vurpillot
1Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PH, United Kingdom. emmanuelle.marquis@materials.ox.ac.uk
Abstract:
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.
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