High-Resolution Three-Dimensional Imaging of Dislocations

Dislocations and their interactions govern the properties of many materials, ranging from work hardening in metals to device pathology in semiconductor laser diodes. However, conventional electron micrographs are simply two-dimensional projections of three-dimensional (3D) structures, and even stereo microscopy cannot reveal the true 3D complexity of defect structures. Here, we describe an electron tomographic method that yields 3D reconstructions of dislocation networks with a spatial resolution three orders of magnitude better than previous work. We illustrate the method's success with a study of dislocations in a GaN epilayer, where dislocation densities of 1010 per square centimeter are common.