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A liquid metal encapsulation for analyzing porous nanomaterials by atom probe tomography

Analyzing porous (nano)materials by the atom probe tomography has been notoriously difficult. The electrostatic pressure intensifies stress at voids which results in premature failure of the specimen, and the electrostatic field distribution near voids lead to aberrations that are difficult to predict. Here we propose a new encapsulating method for a porous sample using a low-melting-point Bi-In-Sn alloy, known as Fields metal. As a model porous sample, we used single-crystalline wustite following direct hydrogen-reduced into iron. The complete encapsulation is performed using in-situ heating on the stage of the scanning-electron microscope up to approx. 70 Celsius. No visible corrosion nor dissolution of the sample occurred. Subsequently specimens are shaped by focused ion beam milling under cryogenic conditions at -190 Celsius. The proposed approach is versatile, can be applied to provide good quality atom probe datasets from microporous materials.