LEAP Tomography of Electronic Materials

At a time when electronic materials structures are being engineered at the sub-100nm length scale, APT has emerged as a commercial analytical tool capable of providing crucial information for research, development, and process engineering. Its capability to deliver compositional imaging at the atomic scale from whole devices is unsurpassed. Specimen preparation developments, particularly with FIB instruments, have improved to the point that they facilitate site-specific analyses with sub-lOnm positioning precision in a several-hour timeframe. Three-dimensional dopant profiling with high sensitivity (~10 appm), concentration profiling with 0.2nm spatial resolution, and H mapping are important characteristics that are unique to APT. These and other capabilities provide a large amount of newly-available information and will impact the way components and whole devices are developed and processed going forward.