Challenges Associated with the Characterisation of Nanocrystalline Materials Using Atom Probe Tomography

Atom probe tomography provides compositional information in three dimensions at the atomic scale, and is therefore extremely suited to the study of nanocrystalline materials. In this paper we present atom probe results from the investigation of nanocomposite TiSi¬Nx coatings and nanocrystalline Al. We address some of the major challenges associated with the study of nanocrystalline materials, including specimen preparation, visualisation, common artefacts in the data and approaches to quantitative analysis. We also discuss the potential for the technique to relate crystallographic information to the compositional maps.