How precise can atoms of a nanocluster be located in 3D using a tilt series of scanning transmission electron microscopy images?

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate how precise atoms of a small nanocluster can ultimately be located in three dimensions (3D) from a tilt series of images acquired using annular dark field (ADF) scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Therefore, we derive an expression for the statistical precision with which the 3D atomic position coordinates can be estimated in a quantitative analysis. Evaluating this statistical precision as a function of the microscope settings also allows us to derive the optimal experimental design. In this manner, the optimal angular tilt range, required electron dose, optimal detector angles, and number of projection images can be determined.

Structural properties of sub-nanometer metallic clusters

“…interface, grain boundary, clusters, nanoparticles-TEM (James and Browning 1999, Azubel et al 2014, Wang and Palmer 2015b) and its variants have always given useful atomistic descriptions and insights. HRTEM (Flores et al 2003, Elechiguerra et al 2006, Alania et al 2017, which is schematically reproduced in figure 5 provides an atomistic morphological characterisation referring to size and shape and also on crystallographic phase and the degree of order. It works counting all the particles falling on micrographs and therefore it has the great advantage to output a complete distribution of particle size, which can be quantified in terms of mean diameter, its standard deviation, profile of the distribution.…”

Frozen lattice and absorptive model for high angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy: A comparison study in terms of integrated intensity and atomic column position measurement

“…For detectors D 2 and D 3 , the AP shows a better precision for small thicknesses, and the FL for larger thicknesses. It is important to mention that the attainable precision with which atomic column positions can be measured, can be used to optimize the settings of the electron microscope [55,56]. The observed differences between the predicted precision for both methods shown in figure 7 is small enough to accurately predict the optimal settings and to get an accurate prediction of the precision that can ultimately be attained.…”

Ab initio determination of atomic structure of Zn–Zr precipitates in a Mg–Nd–Zn–Zr alloy

“…High-angle annular dark field scanning-transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) has become a popular technique for materials characterization, because it can provide atomic resolution information of both crystal and chemical structure of materials (Pennycook & Jesson, 1992;Krivanek et al, 2010;Yang et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2019). The size, shape, number of atoms in a column of Ag or Au nanoclusters or nanorods can be deduced based on quantitative image analyses of atomic resolution HAADF-STEM images recorded along different zone axes (Van Aert et al, 2011;Goris et al, 2012;Alania et al, 2017). 3D atomic coordinates in one FePt particle with a face-centered tetragonal structure were determined by tomography reconstruction based on a tilt series of 68 HAADF-STEM images (Yang et al, 2017).…”