Solving complex nanostructures with ptychographic atomic electron tomography

Abstract

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is essential for determining atomic scale structures in structural biology and materials science. In structural biology, three-dimensional structures of proteins are routinely determined from thousands of identical particles using phase-contrast TEM. In materials science, three-dimensional atomic structures of complex nanomaterials have been determined using atomic electron tomography (AET). However, neither of these methods can determine the three-dimensional atomic structure of heterogeneous nanomaterials containing light elements. Here, we perform ptychographic electron tomography from 34.5 million diffraction patterns to reconstruct an atomic resolution tilt series of a double wall-carbon nanotube (DW-CNT) encapsulating a complex ZrTe sandwich structure. Class averaging the resulting tilt series images and subpixel localization of the atomic peaks reveals a Zr11Te50 structure containing a previously unobserved ZrTe2 phase in the core. The experimental realization of atomic resolution ptychographic electron tomography will allow for the structural determination of a wide range of beam-sensitive nanomaterials containing light elements.

Revealing the three-dimensional arrangement of polar topology in nanoparticles

“…With the development of the four-dimensional STEM (4D-STEM) scheme based on high-speed pixelated electron detector technology, it is now possible to fully utilize the information contained in scattered electron beams during STEM measurement 63 , 64 . Several experimental and computational studies suggest that the 3D atomic coordinates of both low- Z and high- Z elements can be accurately measured together via electron tomography based on 4D-STEM 65 – 67 . We foresee that the full 3D atomic structures (including oxygens and other low- Z elements on the surface) and underlying mechanisms of ferroelectric orderings in nanosized systems will be deciphered in the near future.…”

Atomic‐scale strain analysis for advanced Si/SiGe heterostructure by using transmission electron microscopy

“…It is a versatile and powerful tool for characterizing the crystal and electronic structures of materials at the atomic scale. 33 TEM has exhibited fascination in implementing high-precision strain measurements with nanoscale resolution. [34][35][36] As summarized in Figure 1, significant works have been devoted to the study of the lattice structure, phase transition, strain, and other characteristics of Si/SiGe heterojunctions by TEM technology, and promote its wide application in various research fields such as CMOS technology, optoelectronic devices, quantum devices, memory, and communication.…”