1 Recent atom probe studies at IMR- a comprehensive review

This paper reviews our recent atom probe research activities conducted at Institute for Materials Research (IMR), Tohoku University, during a period of 1990 to date. The atom probe research started at IMR when the authors constructed an energy compensated time-of-flight atom probe in 1990. Since then, this instrument has been employed for various metallurgical problems, providing better understandings to mechanisms of microstructural evolution in various metallic materials. Notable achievements are studies of precipitation processes in aluminum alloys, nanocrystallization processes of amorphous alloys, microstructural characterizations of magnetic thin films and various other metallic materials. A new instrument equipped with a reflectron type time-of-flight atom probe and a position sensitive atom probe (PoSAP) was constructed in 1994. This instrument allowed three dimensional visualizations of atom distributions in alloys with an atomic resolution. PoSAP has been employed to characterize microstructures in Cr-Fe and Co-Cr(-Ta) magnetic alloys