Advanced concentration analysis of atom probe tomography data: Local proximity histograms and pseudo-2D concentration maps

Peter Felfer; Julie Cairney

doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2018.03.011

Advanced concentration analysis of atom probe tomography data: Local proximity histograms and pseudo-2D concentration maps

Ultramicroscopy. 2018 Jun:189:61-64. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2018.03.011. Epub 2018 Mar 17.

Authors

Peter Felfer¹, Julie Cairney²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Material Science and Engineering, Institute I, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen 91058, Germany; Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia. Electronic address: peter.felfer@fau.de.
² Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.

PMID: 29626834
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2018.03.011

Abstract

Analysing the distribution of selected chemical elements with respect to interfaces is one of the most common tasks in data mining in atom probe tomography. This can be represented by 1D concentration profiles, 2D concentration maps or proximity histograms, which represent concentration, density etc. of selected species as a function of the distance from a reference surface/interface. These are some of the most useful tools for the analysis of solute distributions in atom probe data. In this paper, we present extensions to the proximity histogram in the form of 'local' proximity histograms, calculated for selected parts of a surface, and pseudo-2D concentration maps, which are 2D concentration maps calculated on non-flat surfaces. This way, local concentration changes at interfaces or and other structures can be assessed more effectively.