Atom Probe Tomography Workshop in India
Srinivasan Swaminathan (Lead Engineer) and K. G. V. Sivakumar (Research Engineer) from the Materials Characterization Laboratory, GE Global Research, Bangalore attended 3D atom probe tomography (3DAPT) workshop held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras on January 9th, 2012. It was a great platform to get introduced to 3DAPT from various researchers and explore potential collaborations for GE within India. Briefly, 3DAPT involves removing layers of atoms from a needle shaped sample, with a finite radius of curvature, followed by 3D reconstruction of atom positions. The main advantages of 3D APT include quantitative analysis of both matrix species and impurities (e.g, parts per million (ppm ) concentrations) at small length scales (such as grain boundaries).
The workshop was organized by the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras, Combinatorial Sciences and Materials Informatics Collaboratory (CoSMIC), Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA in association with Defense Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL), Hyderabad. The aim of the workshop was twofold: (1) to educate students and researchers in India about the power of 3DAPT and (2) to develop a national facility for 3DAPT in India.
The workshop was hosted by Professor B. S. Murty, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras. Dr. G. Sundararajan, Director of International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad gave the inaugural address, chalking out a plan for setting up an APT user facility in India. The series of technical talks included:
- Professor Ranganathan from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore who is regarded worldwide for his seminal work on Field-Ion Microscopy
- Professor Krishna Rajan from Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA talked about the need for computational efforts towards interpreting APT results
- Mr. Peter Clifton from CAMECA spoke on the evolution of 3DAPT
- Dr. Balamuralikrishnan from DMRL, Hyderabad, talked about the application of APT to understand atomic scale phenomena in steels and superalloys
- Dr. R. Gopalan from ARCI, Hyderabad, explained how APT helped him understand the magnetic properties of hard magnets
- Dr. Anirudha Biswas from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai, described compositional evolution of nano-scale precipitates and precipitate/matrix interfaces in two aluminium alloys
- Professor B.S. Murty from IIT Madras, elucidated how 3DAPT aided in understanding of nanoquasicrystallization of metallic glasses, high entropy alloys and Fe based oxide dispersion strengthened alloys
- Dr. Satyanarayana V N T Kuchibhatla from Battelle Science and Technology India, Pune, illustrated the application of laser assisted APT for chemical imaging of GaN/InGaN multilayer thin films grown on GaN substrate
- Professor Chandan Srivastava from IISc, Bangalore, talked about the different techniques available for preparing APT samples
- The remaining talks centered around application of advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) especially with reference to analytical (chemical) imaging (given by Dr. M. Vijayalakshmi, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam) and aberration correction (given by Dr. G. K. Dey, BARC, Mumbai)
Overall, the workshop was very informative; GE could greatly benefit in understanding materials at the atomic scale using 3DAPT. In this regard, efforts are already underway at GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA to collaborate with various facilities having 3DAPT that has so far yield three journal publications:
1. T.J. Prosa, R. Alvis, L. Tsakalakos, and V.S. Smentkowski “Characterization of dilute species within trimethylboron-grown silicon nanowires: protected lift-out specimen preparation for atom probe tomography” Journal of Microscopy – Short Communication 239 (2) (2010) 92 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2818.2010.03375.x
2. R. M. Ulfig, E. Oltman, D. J. Larson, and V. S. Smentkowski “Improvements in Three-Dimensional Compositional Analysis of Complex Alloys” Microscopy and Microanalysis, 15(2), (2009) 294 CD.doi: 10.1017/S1431927609098791
3. M.R. Keenan, V.S. Smentkowski, R. M. Ulfig, E. Oltman, D.J. Larson and T. F. Kelly “Atomic-scale phase composition through multivariate statistical analysis of atom probe tomography data” Microscopy and Microanalysis, 17(3) (2011) 418. DOI: 10.1017/S1431927611000353:
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