High Field Consultants
High Field Consultants was founded in 1993 by J. A. Panitz to provide atom probe expertise to industry and academia. More specifically, they specialize in analysis, developing techniques from atom scale imaging, and high electric field phenomena investigation.Background
High-Field Consultants founder, J. A. Panitz, was the inventor of the Imaging Atom-Probe and the 10 cm Atom-Probe that are the progenitors of the commercial atom probes available today. The atom probe was introduced at the by Erwin Wilhelm Müller and J. A. Panitz. It combined a field ion microscope with a mass spectrometer having a single particle detection capability and, for the first time, an instrument could “... determine the nature of one single atom seen on a metal surface and selected from neighboring atoms at the discretion of the observer”.Museum
High Field Consultants has created a museum to preserve the legacy of the Field Emission Microscope and its progenies, the Field Ion Microscope and the Atom-Probe. The Field Emission Microscope was introduced in 1936. It was the first microscope to achieve nanometer resolution. In 1951 its progeny; the Field Ion Microscope, was introduced and in 1956 it became the first microscope to image isolated atoms on a metal surface. In 1967 the Atom-Probe Field Ion Microscope was introduced and extended the capability of the microscope by determining the chemical identity of the imaged atoms. In 1973 the paradigm shifted away from the Field Ion Microscope with the introduction of the 10 cm Atom Probe. Patented and dubbed the Imaging Atom-Probe in 1975, it became the progenitor of future atom probes. Today, the Atom-Probe is a commercial tool in the arsenal of instruments used to develop new materials for technology and industry.