The tomographic atom probe (TAP) is a three-dimensional quantitative high-resolution microscope which provides, at the atomic scale, the spatial distribution of atoms in the analysed specimen. Until now, this technique was little used to characterize powder materials due the difficulties linked to atom probe specimen preparation. Nowadays, the development of new specimen preparation methods allows a systematic characterization of powder materials down to the atomic scale. In this paper, we report the results of TAP analyses of magnetoresistive Cu80Co20 granular alloys and nanocomposite SmCo5/alpha-Fe alloys. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.