Cemented tungsten carbide has been analyzed using laser-pulsed atom probe tomography (APT). The influence of experimental parameters, including laser pulse energy, pulse repetition rate, and specimen base temperature, on the acquired data were evaluated from different aspects, such as mass spectrum, chemical composition, noise-to-signal ratio, and multiple events. Within all the applied analysis conditions, only 1 MHz pulse repetition rate led to a strong detector saturation effect, resulting in a largely biased chemical composition. A comparative study of the laser energy settings showed that an ~12 times higher energy was required for the less focused green laser of the LEAPTM 3000X HR system to achieve a similar evaporation field as the finer spot ultraviolet laser of the LEAPTM 5000 XS system.

Quasi-periodic excitation of the tunneling junction in a scanning tunneling microscope, by a mode-locked ultrafast laser, superimposes a regular sequence of 15 fs pulses on the DC tunneling current. In the frequency domain, this is a frequency comb with harmonics at integer multiples of the laser pulse repetition frequency. With a gold sample the 200th harmonic at 14.85 GHz has a signal-to-noise ratio of 25 dB, and the power at each harmonic varies inversely with the square of the frequency. Now we report the first measurements with a semiconductor where the laser photon energy must be less than the bandgap energy of the semiconductor; the microwave frequency comb must be measured within 200 μm of the tunneling junction; and the microwave power is 25 dB below that with a metal sample and falls off more rapidly at the higher harmonics. Our results suggest that the measured attenuation of the microwave harmonics is sensitive to the semiconductor spreading resistance within 1 nm of the tunneling junction. This approach may enable sub-nanometer carrier profiling of semiconductors without requiring the diamond nanoprobes in scanning spreading resistance microscopy.