Rolland N, Larson D J, Geiser B P, Duguay S, Vurpillot F, Blavette D
Groupe de Physique des Matériaux, UMR 6634 CNRS, Université et INSA de Rouen, 76801 St Etienne du Rouvray, France.
Cameca Instruments, Inc., 5500 Nobel Drive, Madison, WI 53711, USA.
Ultramicroscopy. 2015 Dec;159 Pt 2:195-201. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2015.03.010. Epub 2015 Mar 18.
An analytical model describing the field evaporation dynamics of a tip made of a thin layer deposited on a substrate is presented in this paper. The difference in evaporation field between the materials is taken into account in this approach in which the tip shape is modeled at a mesoscopic scale. It was found that the non-existence of sharp edge on the surface is a sufficient condition to derive the morphological evolution during successive evaporation of the layers. This modeling gives an instantaneous and smooth analytical representation of the surface that shows good agreement with finite difference simulations results, and a specific regime of evaporation was highlighted when the substrate is a low evaporation field phase. In addition, the model makes it possible to calculate theoretically the tip analyzed volume, potentially opening up new horizons for atom probe tomographic reconstruction.
