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Coupling Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry and Atom Probe Tomography for Atomic Diffusion and Segregation Measurements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

Alain Portavoce ,
Khalid Hoummada  and
Lee Chow
Alain Portavoce*
Affiliation:
CNRS, IM2NP UMR 7334, 13397 Marseille, France
Khalid Hoummada
Affiliation:
Aix-Marseille University, IM2NP UMR 7334, 13397 Marseille, France
Lee Chow
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA
*
*Author for correspondence: Alain Portavoce, E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

For a long time, secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was the only technique allowing impurity concentrations below 1 at% to be precisely measured in a sample with a depth resolution of few nanometers. For example, SIMS is the classical technique used in microelectronics to study dopant distribution in semiconductors and became, after radiotracers were forsaken, the principal tool used for atomic transport characterization (diffusion coefficient measurements). Due to the lack of other equivalent techniques, sometimes SIMS could be used erroneously, especially when the analyzed solute atoms formed clusters, or for interfacial concentration measurements (segregation coefficient measurements) for example. Today, concentration profiles measured by atom probe tomography (APT) can be compared to SIMS profiles and allow the accuracy of SIMS measurements to be better evaluated. However, APT measurements can also carry artifacts and limitations that can be investigated by SIMS. After a summary of SIMS and APT measurement advantages and disadvantages, the complementarity of these two techniques is discussed, particularly in the case of experiments aiming to measure diffusion and segregation coefficients.

Keywords

atom probe tomographyatomic diffusiongrain boundary segregationsecondary ion mass spectrometry
Type
Materials Science: Non-Metals
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 25 , Special Issue 2: Atom Probe Tomography and Microscopy APT&M 2018 , April 2019 , pp. 517 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2019 

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