Local Electrode Atom Probe

A family friend and real gentleman, Tom Kelly, is the Founder and CTO of Imago Scientific Instruments. The company can be found here: Imago Scientific and a brief bio of him here: Tom Kelly

What does the LEAP do?

It allows researchers to analyze substances at the atomic level. The substances included only metals at first, but now with the introduction of a pulsing laser, it can do semi-conductors and ceramics.

How does it do this?

From the perspective of the sample being analyzed, the following occurs:
The sample is prepped, usually to bring it to a size that can be analyzed. To get an
idea, the probe can handle around 80 million atoms at a time. If a cross-section of a human hair
were one atom thick, that would be around 250 million atoms or about 3 times more atoms than the LEAP can normally handle.
It is taken through a three-stage vacuum process to create an UHV (Ultra-high Vacuum).
The first stage chamber is brought to 1 millionth of an atmosphere, the second stage chamber to 1 billionth of an atmosphere, and the third to 1 trillionth of an atmosphere. Along the way, the temperature drops to less than five Kelvin. This environment inside the third chamber is "as cold as and even less dense than interstellar space."
Once inside the third and last chamber, the sample (normally on a plate) is moved into location over the electrode. To accomplish this, the LEAP makes use of two electron microscopes to pinpoint the sample on an XY-grid over the electrode.
The electrode, in the case of metals, begins pulsing while a magnetic field focuses the charged ions onto a sensor above. The location of their impact and time of travel (impact time - pulse time) is then used to determine distance travelled. With the distance known, the time known, and the amount of energy known, the mass can be derived. The computer then calculates the element and location of every particle that was in the sample.
In the case of semi-conductors and ceramics, the electrode maintains a static electrical field. A laser is then used to provide the remaining energy required to excite the atoms off the surface of the sample.

Now you know what an LEAP does. You're probably wondering what it's used for. I can probably sum that up in one word: nanotechnology. More importantly, prior to the LEAP, atom probes handled about 20 million atoms at a time and took about 2 days to process a sample. The LEAP does its work of 80 million atoms in minutes. This means researchers can put in work requests in the morning and get them back the same day versus putting them in on Monday and getting them back the next week.
So while only a handful of LEAPs exist, what they do is minor on the global scale. What they will do in the near future is allow researchers the world over to discover the world of nanotechnology many times faster than before. And that is a good thing.

Next time - Have a program running off a detachable drive(memory stick or external HD), but the program has hard-coded full path references (i.e. the programmers should be SHOT!) and you need to work on several different computers that drive you mad by inconveniently mapping the drive to different letters? I have a couple solutions for you...

(May be edited at a later date)