(Herbert Gleiter Institute of Nanoscience, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China)
With the increasing demand for environment protection and energy saving, recyclable light-weight Al alloys with high performance become highly demanded for many important applications. Deep understanding of the microstructures of Al alloys and their effects on properties is important for guiding the design and development of high-performance Al alloys. Atom probe tomography (APT), as an advanced characterization technique with near atomic-level spatial resolution, has been used to gain new insight into complex distribution of alloying element atoms in the microstructures of Al alloys. Solid solutions, short-range order, clusters, nano-precipitates, dislocations, stacking faults and interfaces in the near-atomic scale have been studied quantitatively. Such investigations provide an important knowledge base for optimizing processing parameters of Al alloys, designing and developing new advanced Al alloys. In this paper, we firstly introduce the basic principles and data processing of APT, then review the typical application of APT in the development of Al alloys with high performance, and finally discuss the limitations of APT in the application in Al alloys and its future development.