Fig. 1: Qualitative representation of the field evaporation process of a surface atom.
From: Introducing field evaporation energy loss spectroscopy
a Field evaporation principle of a surface atom and qualitative representation of the field evaporation energy barrier evolution as a function of the field. b Qualitative representation of field evaporation of an atom depending on the surface structure. C1: the configuration corresponds to a pure material. C2: the configuration corresponds to a solute atom in a matrix. C3: the configuration corresponds to a binary structure. C4: The configuration corresponds to a ternary structure. The list of configurations is none exhaustive. c Qualitative form of the corresponding mass peak to the field evaporation sequence. The mass peak tail involves a function of the energy deficit δ induced by the voltage pulse. The mass peak presents a linear tail in log scale with a slope factor of a = −Cx/kBT. In this example, a depends on the parameter Cx since the temperature T is considered constant. We consider C1 (dark red) > C2 (red) > C3 (light red) > C4 (pink).
