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Electron microscopy prevalently uses energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) for elemental analysis. EDS and EELS energy resolutions are commonly between 30-100 eV or 0.01-1 eV, respectively. Large solid angle EDS detector technology has increased collection efficiency to enable precision spectroscopy via averaging of 0.02-0.1 eV. This improved precision gives access to chemical shifts; examples are shown in compounds of Al, Ti, and W. EDS can now detect chemical information in a complementary parameter space (accelerating voltage, thickness, atomic number) to that covered by EELS., Comment: 6 main text pages, 18 supplementary text pages

Quasi van der Waals Epitaxy (qvdWE) has been realized for decades at the interfaces between 3D and 2D materials or van der Waals materials. The growth of magnetic topological insulators (MTI) Cr: (BixSb1-x)2Te3 (CBST) on GaAs (111) substrates for Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect (QAH) is actually one of the examples of qvdWE, which is not well noticed despite the fact that its advantages have been used in growth of various MTI materials. This is distinguished from the growth of MTIs on other substrates. Although the qvdWE mode has been used in many 2D growth on III-V substrates, the specific features and mechanisms are not well demonstrated and summarized yet. Here in this work, we have for the first time shown the features of both coherent interfaces and the existence of strain originating from qvdWE at the same time., Comment: 5 figures, 1 table. Already shown in APS March Meeting 2023 and 2024

Electronic devices are extremely sensitive to defects in their constituent semiconductors, but locating electronic point defects in bulk semiconductors has previously been impossible. Here we apply scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) electron beam-induced current (EBIC) imaging to map electronic defects in a GaAs nanowire Schottky diode. Imaging with a non-damaging 80 or 200 kV STEM acceleration potential reveals a minority-carrier diffusion length that decreases near the surface of the hexagonal nanowire, thereby demonstrating that the device's charge collection efficiency (CCE) is limited by surface defects. Imaging with a 300 keV STEM beam introduces vacancy-interstitial (VI, or Frenkel) defects in the GaAs that increase carrier recombination and reduce the CCE of the diode. We create, locate, and characterize a single insertion event, determining that a defect inserted 7 nm from the Schottky interface broadly reduces the CCE by 10% across the entire nanowire device. Variable-energy STEM EBIC imaging thus allows both benign mapping and pinpoint modification of a device's e-h recombination landscape, enabling controlled experiments that illuminate the impact of both extended (1D and 2D) and point (0D) defects on semiconductor device performance., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

Total electron yield (TEY) imaging is an established scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) technique that gives varying contrast based on a sample's geometry, elemental composition, and electrical conductivity. However, the TEY-STXM signal is determined solely by the electrons that the beam ejects from the sample. A related technique, X-ray beam-induced current (XBIC) imaging, is sensitive to electrons and holes independently, but requires electric fields in the sample. Here we report that multi-electrode devices can be wired to produce differential electron yield (DEY) contrast, which is also independently sensitive to electrons and holes, but does not require an electric field. Depending on whether the region illuminated by the focused STXM beam is better connected to one electrode or another, the DEY-STXM contrast changes sign. DEY-STXM images thus provide a vivid map of a device's connectivity landscape, which can be key to understanding device function and failure. To demonstrate an application in the area of failure analysis, we image a 100~nm, lithographically-defined aluminum nanowire that has failed after being stressed with a large current density., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have not kept pace. This gap handicaps the student and the practitioner, making it harder to learn and apply ideas that are `well understood', and doubtless making it more difficult to see past those ideas to new discoveries. Energy, momentum, and action are archaic concepts representing an unnecessary level of abstraction. Viewed from a modern perspective, these quantities correspond to wave parameters, namely temporal frequency, spatial frequency, and phase, respectively. The main results of classical mechanics can be concisely reproduced by considering waves in the spacetime defined by special relativity. This approach unifies kinematics and dynamics, and introduces inertial mass not via a definition, but rather as the real-space effect of a reciprocal-space invariant., Comment: 24 pages, 0 figures

Current thermometry techniques lack the spatial resolution required to see the temperature gradients in typical, highly-scaled modern transistors. As a step toward addressing this problem, we have measured the temperature dependence of the volume plasmon energy in silicon nanoparticles from room temperature to 1250$^\circ$C, using a chip-style heating sample holder in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) equipped with electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). The plasmon energy changes as expected for an electron gas subject to the thermal expansion of silicon. Reversing this reasoning, we find that measurements of the plasmon energy provide an independent measure of the nanoparticle temperature consistent with that of the heater chip's macroscopic heater/thermometer to within the 5\% accuracy of the chip thermometer's calibration. Thus silicon has the potential to provide its own, high-spatial-resolution thermometric readout signal via measurements of its volume plasmon energy. Furthermore, nanoparticles in general can serve as convenient nanothermometers for \emph{in situ} electron microscopy experiments., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) has been widely applied in the physical and biological sciences using synchrotron radiation, XFELs, high harmonic generation, electrons and optical lasers. One of CDI's important applications is to probe dynamic phenomena with high spatio-temporal resolution. Here, we report the development of a general in situ CDI method for real-time imaging of dynamic processes in solution. By introducing a time-invariant overlapping region as a real-space constraint, we show that in situ CDI can simultaneously reconstruct a time series of the complex exit wave of dynamic processes with robust and fast convergence. We validate this method using numerical simulations with coherent X-rays and performing experiments on a materials science and a biological specimen in solution with an optical laser. Our numerical simulations further indicate that in situ CDI can potentially reduce the radiation dose by more than an order of magnitude relative to conventional CDI. As coherent X-rays are under rapid development worldwide, we expect in situ CDI could be applied to probe dynamic phenomena ranging from electrochemistry, structural phase transitions, charge transfer, transport, crystal nucleation, melting and fluid dynamics to biological imaging., Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures

A thin conducting sheet - graphene, for example - transmits, absorbs, and reflects radiation. A sheet that is very thin, even vanishingly so, can still produce 50% absorption at normal incidence if it has conductivity corresponding to half the impedance of free space. We find that, regardless of the sheet conductivity, there exists a combination of polarization and angle of incidence that achieves this impedance half-matching condition. If the conducting medium can be inverted, the conductivity is formally negative and the sheet amplifies the incident radiation. To the extent that a negative half-match in a thin sheet can be maintained, enormous single-pass gain in both transmission and reflection is possible. Known semiconductors (e.g., gallium nitride) have the optical properties necessary to give large amplification in a structure that is, remarkably, both thin and nonresonant., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Updated to final PRA format with two additional references (1934 Woltersdorff and 1964 Kaplan)

After carefully studying the comment by Wang et al. (arXiv:1408.6420), we found it includes several mistakes and unjustified statements and Wang et al. lack very basic knowledge of dislocations. Moreover, there is clear evidence indicating that Wang et al. significantly misrepresented our method and claimed something that they actually did not implement., Comment: 2 pages, 9 references

Graphene's structure bears on both the material's electronic properties and fundamental questions about long range order in two-dimensional crystals. We present an analytic calculation of selected area electron diffraction from multi-layer graphene and compare it with data from samples prepared by chemical vapor deposition and mechanical exfoliation. A single layer scatters only 0.5% of the incident electrons, so this kinematical calculation can be considered reliable for five or fewer layers. Dark-field transmission electron micrographs of multi-layer graphene illustrate how knowledge of the diffraction peak intensities can be applied for rapid mapping of thickness, stacking, and grain boundaries. The diffraction peak intensities also depend on the mean-square displacement of atoms from their ideal lattice locations, which is parameterized by a Debye-Waller factor. We measure the Debye-Waller factor of a suspended monolayer of exfoliated graphene and find a result consistent with an estimate based on the Debye model. For laboratory-scale graphene samples, finite size effects are sufficient to stabilize the graphene lattice against melting, indicating that ripples in the third dimension are not necessary., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful imaging tool that has found broad application in materials science, nanoscience and biology(1-3). With the introduction of aberration-corrected electron lenses, both the spatial resolution and image quality in TEM have been significantly improved(4,5) and resolution below 0.5 {\AA} has been demonstrated(6). To reveal the 3D structure of thin samples, electron tomography is the method of choice(7-11), with resolutions of ~1 nm^3 currently achievable(10,11). Recently, discrete tomography has been used to generate a 3D atomic reconstruction of a silver nanoparticle 2-3 nm in diameter(12), but this statistical method assumes prior knowledge of the particle's lattice structure and requires that the atoms fit rigidly on that lattice. Here we report the experimental demonstration of a general electron tomography method that achieves atomic scale resolution without initial assumptions about the sample structure. By combining a novel projection alignment and tomographic reconstruction method with scanning transmission electron microscopy, we have determined the 3D structure of a ~10 nm gold nanoparticle at 2.4 {\AA} resolution. While we cannot definitively locate all of the atoms inside the nanoparticle, individual atoms are observed in some regions of the particle and several grains are identified at three dimensions. The 3D surface morphology and internal lattice structure revealed are consistent with a distorted icosahedral multiply-twinned particle. We anticipate that this general method can be applied not only to determine the 3D structure of nanomaterials at atomic scale resolution(13-15), but also to improve the spatial resolution and image quality in other tomography fields(7,9,16-20)., Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures

Objects that are small compared to their thermal photon wavelengths violate the assumptions underlying optical pyrometry and can show unusual coherence effects. To investigate this regime we measure the absolute light intensity from individual, incandescent multiwalled carbon nanotubes. The nanotube filaments' physical dimensions and composition are determined using transmission electron microscopy and their emissivities are calculated in terms of bulk conductivities. A single-color pyrometric analysis then returns a temperature value for each wavelength, polarization, and applied bias measured. Compared to the more common multiwavelength analysis, single-color pyrometry supports a more consistent and complete picture of the carbon nanotube lamps, one that describes their emissivity, optical conductivity, and thermal conductivity in the range 1600-2400 K., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We fabricate nanoscale lamps which have a filament consisting of a single multiwalled carbon nanotube. After determining the nanotube geometry with a transmission electron microscope, we use Joule heating to bring the filament to incandescence, with peak temperatures in excess of 2000 K. We image the thermal light in both polarizations simultaneously as a function of wavelength and input electrical power. The observed degree of polarization is typically of the order of 75%, a magnitude predicted by a Mie model of the filament that assigns graphene's optical conductance $\pi e^2/2 h$ to each nanotube wall., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Spin-1/2 particles such as the electron are described by the Dirac equation, which allows for two spin eigenvalues (up or down) and two types of energy eigenvalues (positive or negative, corresponding to the electron and the positron). A model of electrons hopping from atom to atom in graphene's honeycomb lattice gives low-energy electronic excitations that obey a relation formally identical to a 2+1 dimensional Dirac equation. Graphene's spin equivalent, "pseudospin", arises from the degeneracy introduced by the honeycomb lattice's two inequivalent atomic sites per unit cell. Previously it has been thought that the usual electron spin and the pseudospin indexing the graphene sublattice state are merely analogues. Here we show that the pseudospin is also a real angular momentum. This identification explains the suppression of electron backscattering in carbon nanotubes and the angular dependence of light absorption by graphene. Furthermore, it demonstrates that half-integer spin like that carried by the quarks and leptons can derive from hidden substructure, not of the particles themselves, but rather of the space in which these particles live., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure; single document version of the PRL, supplemental material, and erratum

Graphene's low-energy electronic excitations obey a 2+1 dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian. After extending this Hamiltonian to include interactions with a quantized electromagnetic field, we calculate the amplitude associated with the simplest, tree-level Feynman diagram: the vertex connecting a photon with two electrons. This amplitude leads to analytic expressions for the 3D angular dependence of photon emission, the photon-mediated electron-hole recombination rate, and corrections to graphene's opacity $\pi \alpha$ and dynamic conductivity $\pi e^2/2 h$ for situations away from thermal equilibrium, as would occur in a graphene laser. We find that Ohmic dissipation in perfect graphene can be attributed to spontaneous emission., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures