What does ATLAS mean in ARCHITECTURE

Atomic-terrace low-angle shadowing (ATLAS) is an advanced technique used to study surfaces and interfaces of materials at the nanoscale. It involves depositing a thin layer of a material onto a surface and then imaging it in order to observe the atomic level structures that make up the layers.

ATLAS provides detailed information on both lateral and vertical structures, whereas other imaging techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM) typically only provide information on the topography of a sample. Additionally, ATLAS has much higher resolution than traditional techniques which means that it can be used to observe features that are too small for other techniques.

ATLAS can be used to study a wide range of materials including metals, semiconductors, polymers, alloys and oxides.

The samples suitable for imaging with ATLAS must have some level of topographic complexity; this could include surfaces, buried interfaces or nanostructures such as nanoparticles or nanowires. The sample also needs to be relatively inert under electron beam irradiation in order for the images obtained to remain stable during analysis.

The process begins by depositing a thin layer of material onto a sample surface through physical vapor deposition (PVD). This layer is then imaged using a transmission electron microscope (TEM), which produces images with high contrast and resolution due to the reduced scattering cross section of electrons in the ultra-thin film. This allows for detailed observation of the 3D structure at nanometer resolutions even in difficult to image materials like polymers or amorphous solids.

One advantage is that it offers ultra-high resolution (~1 nm) and contrast; this makes it possible to visualize details such as grain boundaries, steps on terraces and measures such as tilt angles between different layers in multilayer systems which are difficult or impossible t detect by standard SEM techniques. Additionally, since dry deposition technologies are used for sample preparation no extra post processing steps are required after data acquisition making it faster than wet etching methods often used for similar applications.

Depending on the complexity of your experiment, an ATLAS experiment may take anywhere from 1 hour up to several days depending on how long data acquisition needs to take place in order to get satisfactory results. Also keep in mind that there may be additional time needed if post processing such as alignment or reconstruction need to be done after data collection has been completed.

In order perform an ATLAS experiment you will need a transmission electron microscope equipped with dry deposition capabilities - these include physical vapor deposition (PVD) systems capable of providing thin film coatings on samples under vacuum conditions as well things like focused ion beam deposition systems capable of creating more complex patterns using ions instead of atoms/molecules from gases or liquids. An appropriate microscope stage may also need to be acquired depending on sample size since larger samples require larger stages for accurate imaging inside the micron sized chamber of TEMs.