Abstract
Atom probe tomography (APT) is a nanoscale destructive material analysis method in which a sample is evaporated in a high electric field (field evaporation). It provides a unique and coherent quantification of atomic species with respect to their locations within the sample and is relevant for the identification of nanometric features. It has a wide range of application areas in materials science. However, to analyse the volumetric distribution of atoms within the evaporated samples, the hit maps obtained with APT need to be spatially reconstructed. The standard reconstruction method does not take into account the physical quantities involved in evaporation, resulting in artefacts near regions of interest that degrade spatial resolution. New, alternative methods fail to capture the nanostructure or cannot reconstruct samples of realistic size within a feasible time frame. Consequently, the potential of APT remains largely unexploited. My goal is to develop the methods needed to create a fast and spatially accurate reconstruction operator using a time-reversed integration scheme based on a physically rigorous forward operator that models field evaporation. The use of advanced volumetric meshing and simulation tools will ensure time efficiency while maintaining sub-nanometre accuracy.
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