Kazuhiro Hono
Fellow, National Institute for Materials Science

　To broaden the applications of the three-dimensional atom probe (3DAP) technique for mapping real 3D atomic distributions for a wide variety of materials, the technical limitations of the conventional 3DAP that stem from the field evaporation process will be overcome by using pulsed-laser assisted field evaporation. A newly developed laser assisted wide angle 3DAP will be applied to nanostructure analyses of magnetic and semiconductor materials and their devices as well as the metallic materials that used to be impossible to analyze with the voltage pulsed 3DAP. At the same time, specimen preparation techniques that will make it possible to analyze specific areas of various types of materials will be developed.