Much effort ha
s been devoted to the development of computational technique
s in atom probe micro
scopy over the pa
st decade. There have been
several driver
s for thi
s effort. Fir
stly, there ha
s been effort devoted to addre
ssing the challenge
s of di
scerning information from the increa
singly large
size of the data, and capturing the opportunitie
s that thi
s large data pre
sent
s. Secondly, there ha
s been
significant new effort devoted to the
simulation of atom probe data
so that pri
stine data
set
s that contain micro
structural feature
s of increa
sing complexity can be generated
in-silico, and
subjected to complex data-mining algorithm
s. Thi
s ha
s enabled the benchmarking of variou
s algorithm
s, guided the
setting of parameter
s for particular analy
se
s, and expo
sed the effect
s of in
strumentation parameter
s such a
s detector efficiency and aberration
s in ionic flight path. The author
s are e
specially intere
sted in the pro
spect
s of converging atomic-
scale micro
scopy with atomic-
scale material
s modelling via fir
st principle
s approache
s. Thi
s involve
s exci
sing part
s of the APM data and u
sing the
se a
s super-cell input
s to calculation
s of material
s propertie
s via den
sity functional theory. It i
s our opinion that thi
s repre
sent
s a major advance for material
s science becau
se it enable
s micro
scopy to advance micro
structure-property relation
ship
s to the direct mapping of
such relation
ship
s ba
sed on many-body interaction
s. A
s such, thi
s approach ha
s great potential for material
s de
sign and development.
The final part of this paper focuses on how cloud-based computing represents an exciting frontier of the computational aspects of atom probe microscopy. We discuss the opportunities and the barriers for conducting new materials science through the analysis and visualisation of atom probe data via new generation tools that are cloud-based, and which are managed, curated and governed with significant user-community input and integrated with contemporary electronic laboratory notebook technology.