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In 2024, a team from the Groupe de Physique des Matériaux (GPM) succeeded in unifying two major high-resolution microscopy techniques into a single instrument: atom probe tomography and transmission electron microscopy. This achievement, published in Nature Communications, paves the way for a better convergence of these techniques, enabling more precise three-dimensional atomic-scale descriptions of matter.
Atom Probe Tomography Becomes Accessible to Transmission Electron Microscopes
The Groupe de Physique des Matériaux (GPM) has successfully completed an ambitious 10-year instrumental project to describe matter in three dimensions at the atomic scale with unprecedented precision. This achievement marks a crucial milestone toward the development of an ultimate imaging technique capable of positioning each atom in three-dimensional space while precisely identifying its chemical nature. This new instrument is already accelerating research on materials, particularly those central to the energy transition.
In 2014, inspired by the work of American scientist Thomas Kelly, who proposed building a machine combining a transmission electron microscope and an atom probe tomography instrument (see publication), researchers at the Groupe de Physique des Matériaux (GPM) suggested a more direct approach.
They aimed to miniaturize the atom probe tomography instrument to adapt it to existing transmission electron microscopes. This approach had the dual advantage of enabling the rapid adoption of the new technique, as transmission electron microscopes are widely available in many countries.
After ten years of research and increasingly promising results—thanks in part to funding from the Normandy Region and the European Union (via FEDER funds) through the "FusionSATMET" project launched in 2021—the GPM team successfully completed the project. The results have recently been published in Nature Communications.
https://www.univ-rouen.fr/actualites/premiere-mondiale-pour-lurn-et-le-gpm/
