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It is reported that lattice imaging with a 300 kV field emission microscope in combination with numerical reconstruction procedures can be used to reach an interpretable resolution of about 80 pm for the first time. A retrieval of the electron exit wave from focal series allows for the resolution of single atomic columns of the light elements carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen at a projected nearest neighbor spacing down to 85 pm. Lens aberrations are corrected on-line during the experiment and by hardware such that resulting image distortions are below 80 pm. Consequently, the imaging can be aberration-free to this extent. The resolution enhancement results from increased electrical and mechanical stability's of the instrument coupled with a low spherical aberration coefficient of 0.595 + 0.005 mm.

Abstract: The distribution of indium in a GaN/In x Ga1− x N/Al y Ga1− y N quantum well with x±Δx=0.24±0.07 is quantitatively investigated by extraction of displacement fields from lattice images. Simulations accurately describe the measured strain relaxation across a wedge-shaped sample for a sample thickness up to 150nm. The proportionality between indium concentration and resulting lattice constant c(x) is approximated by c(x)=0.5185+0.111x nm. In general, it is challenging to discriminate the effects of random alloying against clustering. In In x Ga1− x N this is particularly true at low indium concentrations x<0.2. For an accurate quantitative analysis, sample preparation and imaging were developed such that radiation damage can be recognized if present. Further, an analysis of detection limits and knowledge of the sample thickness are crucial for obtaining reproducible results. Data averaging is necessary to reach sufficient precision. Consequently, the size of the indium-rich clusters is poorly known if x is small. Beyond the interest in physical properties of In x Ga1− x N alloys, the analysis of strain and its relaxation exemplifies how quantitative analysis is possible at an atomic level and is in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reconstruction of the exit wave function is an important route to interpreting high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images. Here we demonstrate that convolutional neural networks can be used to reconstruct the exit wave from a short focal series of HRTEM images, with a fidelity comparable to conventional exit wave reconstruction. We use a fully convolutional neural network based on the U-Net architecture, and demonstrate that we can train it on simulated exit waves and simulated HRTEM images of graphene-supported molybdenum disulphide (an industrial desulfurization catalyst). We then apply the trained network to analyse experimentally obtained images from similar samples, and obtain exit waves that clearly show the atomically resolved structure of both the MoS 2 nanoparticles and the graphene support. We also show that it is possible to successfully train the neural networks to reconstruct exit waves for 3400 different two-dimensional materials taken from the Computational 2D Materials Database of known and proposed two-dimensional materials., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The atomic structure and interfaces of CdS/Cu2S heterostructured nanorods are investigated with the aberration-corrected TEAM 0.5 electron microscope operated at 80 kV and 300 kV applying in-line holography and complementary techniques. Cu2S exhibits a low-chalcocite structure in pristine CdS/Cu2S nanorods. Under electron beam irradiation the Cu2S phase transforms into a high-chalcocite phase while the CdS phase maintains its wurtzite structure. Time-resolved experiments reveal that Cu(+)-Cd(2+) cation exchange at the CdS/Cu2S interfaces is stimulated by the electron beam and proceeds within an undisturbed and coherent sulfur sub-lattice. A variation of the electron beam current provides an efficient way to control and exploit such irreversible solid-state chemical processes that provide unique information about system dynamics at the atomic scale. Specifically, we show that the electron beam-induced copper-cadmium exchange is site specific and anisotropic. A resulting displacement of the CdS/Cu2S interfaces caused by beam-induced cation interdiffusion equals within a factor of 3-10 previously reported Cu diffusion length measurements in heterostructured CdS/Cu2S thin film solar cells with an activation energy of 0.96 eV., (© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Sub-Angstrom transmission electron microscopy has been achieved at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) by a one-Angstrom microscope (OAM) project using software and enhanced hardware developed within a Brite-Euram project (Ultramicroscopy 64 (1996) 1). The NCEM OAM provides materials scientists with transmission electron microscopy at a resolution better than 1 A by using extensive image reconstruction to exploit the significantly higher information limit of an FEG-TEM over its Scherzer resolution limit. Reconstruction methods chosen used off-axis holograms and focal series of underfocused images. Measured values of coherence parameters predict an information limit of 0.78 A. Images from a [1 1 0] diamond test specimen show that sub-Angstrom resolution of 0.89 A has been achieved with the OAM using focal series reconstruction.