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An Atom Probe with Ultra-Low Hydrogen Background

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2021

Peter Felfer Open the ORCID record for Peter Felfer [Opens in a new window] ,
Benedict Ott ,
Mehrpad Monajem ,
Valentin Dalbauer ,
Martina Heller ,
Jan Josten  and
Chandra Macaulay
Peter Felfer*
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Benedict Ott
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Mehrpad Monajem
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Valentin Dalbauer
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Martina Heller
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Jan Josten
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
Chandra Macaulay
Affiliation:
Institute for General Materials Properties, Department of Materials Science, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany
*
*Corresponding author: Peter Felfer, E-mail: peter.felfer@fau.de
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Abstract

Atom probe tomography (APT) is a single-ion sensitive time-of-flight mass spectrometry method with near-atomic spatial resolution. In principle, it can be used to detect any chemical element, but so far hydrogen in the form of protium (1H) had to be largely excluded. This is owing to the residual H emitted from the stainless-steel chambers and in-vacuum parts commonly used in atom probe instrumentation. This residual H is then picked up in the APT experiment. In this paper, we show that by replacing the stainless-steel chamber and in-vacuum parts with titanium parts, this residual H can largely be removed, thus enabling the direct imaging of H using APT. We show that besides the drastic reduction of H, also other contaminants such as O, OH, and H2O are reduced by employing this instrument. In the current set-up, the instrument is equipped with high-voltage pulsing limiting the application to conductive materials.

Keywords

atom probe tomographyextreme high vacuumhydrogenmetalsvoltage pulsed atom probe
Type
Detection of Hydrogen
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , August 2022 , pp. 1255 - 1263
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Microscopy Society of America

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