LAUSR

The importance of zircon (ZrSiO4) as a source of geological information at sub-micron scales [1-3] has driven significant interest in the optimization of its analysis by atom probe tomography (APT) [4-6]. Here we report a set of atom probe experiments, using the reference material 91500 [7], aimed primarily at informing a ‘good’ spatial reconstruction of zircon data. As crystallographic features are typically absent from APT data on silicate minerals, the reconstruction cannot be calibrated using methods that depend on lattice information. Similarly, nanoscale features are not always present or available for accurate imaging, which may otherwise allow calibration by correlative methods.