A single layer of LaAlO3 with a nominal thickness of one unit cell, which is sandwiched between a SrTiO3 substrate and a SrTiO3 capping layer, is quantitatively investigated by high-resolution ...transmission electron microscopy. By the use of an aberration-corrected electron microscope and by employing sophisticated numerical image simulation procedures, significant progress is made in two aspects. First, the structural as well as the chemical features of the interface are determined simultaneously on an atomic scale from the same specimen area. Second, the evaluation of the structural and chemical data is carried out in a fully quantitative way on the basis of the absolute image contrast, which has not been achieved so far in materials science investigations using high-resolution electron microscopy. Considering the strong influence of even subtle structural details on the electronic properties of interfaces in oxide materials, a fully quantitative interface analysis, which makes positional data available with picometer precision together with the related chemical information, can contribute to a better understanding of the functionality of such interfaces.
Transmission electron microscopy is an indispensable tool in modern materials science. It enables the structure of materials to be studied with high spatial resolution, and thus makes a decisive ...contribution to the fact that it is now possible to understand the microstructure-related physical and chemical characteristics and to correlate these with the macroscopic materials properties. It was tantamount to a paradigm shift when electron microscopy reached atomic resolution in the late 1990s due to the invention of aberration-corrected electron optics. It is now generally accepted practice to perform picometer-scale measurements and chemical analyses with reference to single atomic units. This review has three objectives. Microscopy in atomic dimensions is applied quantum physics. The consequences of this for practical work and for the understanding and application of the results shall be worked out. Typical applications in materials science will be used to show what can be done with this kind of microscopy and where its limitations lie. In the absence of relevant monographs, the aim is to provide an introduction to this new type of electron microscopy and to enable the reader to access the literature in which special issues are addressed. The paper begins with a brief presentation of the principles of optical aberration correction. It then discusses the fundamentals of atomic imaging and covers typical examples of practical applications to problems in modern materials science. It is emphasized that in atomic-resolution electron microscopy the quantitative interpretation of the images must always be based on the solution of the quantum physical and optical problem on a computer.
We investigate a possible dependence between the applied electron dose-rate and the magnitude of the resulting image contrast in HRTEM of inorganic crystalline objects. The present study is focussed ...on the question whether electron irradiation can induce excessively strong atom vibrations or displacements, which in turn could significantly reduce the resulting image contrast. For this purpose, high-resolution images of MgO, Ge, and Au samples were acquired with varying dose rates using a CS-corrected FEI Titan 80–300 microscope operated at 300kV accelerating voltage. This investigation shows that the magnitude of the signal contrast is independent from the dose rates occurring in conventional HRTEM experiments and that excessively strong vibrations or displacements of bulk atoms are not induced by the applied electron irradiation.
•No dependence between electron dose rate and HRTEM image contrast is found.•This finding is in full accordance with established solid-state physics theory.•Object-related causes for the previous Stobbs-factor phenomenon are ruled out.
•No evidence for a dose-rate driven contrast reduction in HRTEM was found.•Experiments at high and medium dose rates do not show any dose-rate dependence.•Robust results for very low dose rates are ...missing.
In a recent article 1 we examined the influence of the applied electron dose rate on the magnitude of the image contrast in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). We concluded that the magnitude of the image contrast is not substantially affected by the applied electron dose rate. This result is in obvious contradiction to numerous earlier publications by Kisielowski and coworkers 2–7, who commented our recent article due to this contradiction. The present short communication is a response to the comment of Kisielowski and coworkers on our recent article, where we provide additional arguments supporting our initial findings and conclusions on the magnitude of the image contrast in HRTEM.
In low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) we commonly encounter images which, beside amplitude contrast, also show signatures of phase contrast. The images are usually interpreted by following the ...evolution of the contrast during the experiment, and assigning gray levels to morphological changes. Through reconstruction of the exit wave, two aspects of LEEM can be addressed: (1) the resolution can be improved by exploiting the full information limit of the microscope and (2) electron phase shifts which contribute to the image contrast can be extracted. In this article, linear exit wave reconstruction from a through-focal series of LEEM images is demonstrated. As a model system we utilize a heteromolecular monolayer consisting of the organic molecules 3,4,9,10-perylene tetracarboxylic dianhydride and Cu-II-Phthalocyanine, adsorbed on a Ag(111) surface.
FEI Titan 80-300 TEM Thust, Andreas; Barthel, Juri; Tillmann, Karsten
Journal of large-scale research facilities,
01/2016, Volume:
2
Journal Article
Open access
The FEI Titan 80-300 TEM is a high-resolution transmission electron microscope equipped with a field emission gun and a corrector for the spherical aberration (CS) of the imaging lens system. The ...instrument is designed for the investigation of a wide range of solid state phenomena taking place on the atomic scale, which requires true atomic resolution capabilities. Under optimum optical settings of the image CS-corrector (CEOS CETCOR) the point-resolution is extended up to the information limit of well below 100 pm with 200 keV and 300 keV electrons. A special piezo-stage design allows ultra-precise positioning of the specimen in all 3 dimensions. Digital images are acquired with a Gatan 2k x 2k slow-scan charged coupled device camera.
The structure of the oxygen sub-lattice in Cs
0.5Nb
2.5W
2.5O
14 is investigated for the first time by advanced electron-optical methods. Since Cs
0.5Nb
2.5W
2.5O
14 resembles the crystal structure ...of the so-called M1 phase of Mo–V–Nb–Te–O, which is the best catalyst for the selective oxidation of propane to acrylic acid, the structure analysis of the oxygen sub-lattice can contribute substantially to a better understanding of this catalytic process. The so far only partially known structure of the complex metal oxide Cs
0.5Nb
2.5W
2.5O
14 is investigated by combining modern methods of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy with crystallographic image processing techniques. Average atom positions in the
a–
b plane are determined from the phase of the exit-plane wave function, which was numerically reconstructed from a focal series of spherical-aberration-corrected electron micrographs. The experimentally determined atom positions agree well with a structure model obtained by first-principles calculations for the underlying M
5O
14 (M
=
Nb, W) framework. Moreover, several deviations from the periodic structure, which may influence the catalytic properties of the structurally similar M1 phase, are observed. The obtained results demonstrate that aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy is a reliable alternative for the analysis of periodic structures, in particular when traditional methods for crystallographic structure determination like XRD or neutron diffraction cannot be applied.
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