Energetic electrons are tiny, charged, quantum ‘creatures’. This makes them a powerful probe of condensed matter. Energetic electrons have a wavelength the order of a picometre and their interaction with matter is several orders of magnitude stronger than light, x-rays or neutrons, so they scatter multiply within the specimen. As a result, the final scattered electron distribution can contain a wealth of information about atomic-scale volumes of the specimen. While this has been known for many decades, could we do more to exploit the properties of the energetic electron to target the information we seek about our specimens? Are there more efficient ways to harvest this information?
This talk will discuss these basic questions primarily in the context of scanning transmission electron microscopy. It will explore whether we can craft the incident electron probe and tune the scattering within the specimen to generate a scattered intensity distribution rich in the specimen information we want and then consider which electron-optical configuration is best to collect this information.
I will illustrate this discussion with applications to measuring the structure, defect structure and electronic structure of a variety of functional nanostructured materials, such as metallic nanoparticles and various perovskites and oxides being developed for use in photonics, memory devices, batteries and solar cells.
Smart Citations