Highlights
Full Circle of Innovation in Instrumentation: Atomic Level Imaging

A MRSEC innovation comes back home to reveal the atomic structure of new materials

General Overview: In the mid 1990s, an NSF-funded Materials Research Group that evolved into the Wisconsin MRSEC, developed the Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP). The instrument plucks and identifies millions of atoms one-by-one from a sample and reconstructs an atomic scale reproduction of the material in a computer. A spin-out company Millenium-Imago Scientific Instruments was formed to commercialize the LEAP instrument. This MRSEC innovation in instrumentation has come full circle with the Wisconsin MRSEC’s recent acquisition of a commercial LEAP. It is being used to analyze the atomic scale structure of a promising new semiconductor material discovered by the MRSEC.

Atom probe tomography (right) provides three-dimensional maps of the positions of atoms comprising a material. Each dot in the right hand image is a captured and identified atom of a semiconductor.
Atom probe tomography (right) provides three-dimensional maps of the positions of atoms comprising a material. Each dot in the right hand image is a captured and identified atom of a semiconductor.
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Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center

The NSF-sponsored Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center brings together teams of researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to tackle grand challenges in the materials science of liquids and glasses and non-equilibrium magnetism.