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While electron beam induced fragmentation (EBIF) has been reported to result in the formation of nanocrystals of various compositions, the physical forces driving this phenomenon are still poorly understood. We report EBIF to be a much more general phenomenon than previously appreciated, operative across a wide variety of metals, semiconductors and insulators. In addition, we leverage the temperature dependent bandgap of several semiconductors to quantify -using in situ cathodoluminescence spectroscopy -the thermal contribution to EBIF, and find extreme temperature rises upwards of 1000K.

No abstract