Revealing 3D Atomic Structure and Chemistry in Scale-Bridging Volumes via 5D Hyperspectral Electron Tomography

Introduction

Electron microscopy is essential to understanding structure-property-function relationships in modern materials engineering, condensed matter physics, chemistry, and structural biology. Yet, due to complicated scattering physics, today's electron microscopes can only image tiny volumes with 3D atomic resolution.

Project Overview

Within this project, I will turn the tables by utilizing and inverting the scattering physics to image scale-bridging volumes with atomic detail and chemical superresolution. Combining compressive data-acquisition protocols, state-of-the-art electron optics and detectors, and co-designed computational imaging algorithms will make this possible.

Methodology

I will use tomographic experiments and computationally invert the multiple scattering from multidimensional measurements in scanning transmission electron microscopy to determine 3D atomic structure and chemistry in technologically valuable volumes. This has not been realized yet due to significant bottlenecks in the computational complexity of the underlying algorithms and a lack of experimental automation, which I plan to overcome in this project.

Project Objectives

The project is divided into three main objectives:

1. Imaging 3D atomic structure in large volumes
2. Visualizing atomic chemistry in scale-bridging volumes
3. Profiling 3D atomic structure, chemistry, and dynamics in controlled in-situ experiments across scales

Applications

These methods will be applied to essential materials, including examining single hydrogen atoms at grain boundaries in structural metals and studying concealed, extensive interfaces in modern semiconductor materials.

Final Phase

In the final phase, I will record atomistic movies of material fracture in tungsten and alloys. Fracture is one of the most critical failure modes of structural materials with catastrophic consequences. The details of crack nucleation and propagation through the breaking of bonds are still largely unexplored and will be measured directly and compared with large-scale atomistic simulations.