1,721,015 research outputs found
Low-dose performance of parallel-beam nanodiffraction
No full textWe evaluate the low-dose performance of parallel nano-beam diffraction (NBD) in the transmission electron microscope as a method for characterizing radiation sensitive materials at low electron irradiation dose. A criterion, analogous to Rose's, is established for detecting a diffraction spot with desired signal-to-noise ratio. Our experimental data show that a dose substantially lower than in high-resolution bright-field imaging is sufficient to determine structure and orientation of individual nanoscale objects embedded in amorphous matrix. In an instrument equipped with a cold field-emission gun it is possible to form a probe with sub-3 nm diameter and sub-0.3 mrad convergence angle with sufficient beam current to record a diffraction pattern with less than 0.2 s acquisition time. The interpretation of NBD patterns is identical to that of selected area diffraction patterns. We illustrate the physical principles underlying good low-dose performance of NBD by means of a phase grating. The electron irradiation dose needed to detect a diffraction peak in NBD is found proportional to 1/N(2), where N is the number of lattice planes contributing to the peak. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Bright-field TEM imaging of single molecules: Dream or near future?
No full textWe examine the suitability of spherical aberration (Cs)-corrected (CS) and uncorrected (UC) transmission electron microscopes (TEM) for conventional bright-field imaging of radiation-sensitive materials. We have chosen an individual molecule suspended in vacuum as a hypothetical example of a well-defined radiation-sensitive sample. We find that for this particular sample, CS instruments provide about 30% improvement over an UC instrument in terms of signal/noise ratio per unit electron dose at 300 kV. The lowest imaging doses can be achieved in CS instruments equipped with high-brightness electron source operated at low incident electron energies. Our calculations suggest that it may be possible to image individual, iodine- or bromine-substituted organic molecules in bright-field mode, at doses lower than the accepted values for radiation damage of aromatic molecules. Crown Copyright (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Imaging of radiation-sensitive samples in transmission electron microscopes equipped with Zernike phase plates
No full textWe have optimized a bright-field transmission electron microscope for imaging of high-resolution radiation-sensitive materials by calculating the imaging dose n(0) needed to obtain a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)=5. Installing a Zernike phase plate (ZP) decreases the dose needed to detect single atoms by as much as a factor of two at 300 kV. For imaging larger objects, such as Gaussian objects with full-width at half-maximum larger than 0.15 nm, ZP appears more efficient in reducing the imaging dose than correcting for spherical aberration. The imaging dose n(0) does not decrease with extending of chromatic resolution limit by reducing chromatic aberration, using high accelerating potential (U(0)=300 kV), because the image contrast increases slower than the reciprocal of detection radius. However, reducing chromatic aberration would allow accelerating potential to be reduced leading to imaging doses below 10 e(-)/A(2) for a single iodine atom when a CS-corrector and a ZP are used together. Our simulations indicate that, in addition to microscope hardware, optimization is heavily dependent on the nature of the specimen under investigation.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye
Phase retrieval and induction mapping of artificially structured nanometric magnetic arrays
Full text linkPeer reviewed: YesNRC publication: N
Toward the quantitative the interpretation of hole-free phase plate images in a transmission electron microscope
No full textWe present progress toward the quantitative interpretation of phase contrast images obtained using a hole-free phase plate (HFPP) in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). We consider a sinusoidal phase grating test object composed of ~5 nm deep groves in a ~13 nm thick amorphous silicon membrane. The periodic grating splits the beam current into direct beam and diffracted side beams in the focal plane of the imaging lens, where the HFPP is located. The physical separation between the beams allows for a detailed study of the HFPP phase shift evolution and its effect on image contrast. The residual phase shift of the electron beam footprint on the phase plate was measured by electron holography and used as input to image simulations that were compared to experimental data. Our results confirm that phase contrast is established by the phase difference between the direct and side beams, which we can estimate by fitting the image contrast evolution in time with an analytical formula describing the image intensity of a sinusoidal strong phase object. We also observed contrast reversal and frequency doubling of the grating image with time, which we interpret as the phase contrast arising from the interference between side beams becoming dominant. Another observation is the lateral displacement of the image fringes, which can be accounted for by a phase difference between the side beams
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