Image-based nanocrystallography by means of transmission electron goniometry

Abstract

Since the crystallographic phase and morphology of many materials changes with the crystal size in the 1–100 nm range and the potential technological applications of nanoparticles are enormous, a need arises to determine the crystallography of nanoparticles individually. Direct space high-resolution phase-contrast transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic resolution Z-contrast scanning TEM when combined with goniometry of direct and/or reciprocal lattice vectors offer the possibility of developing dedicated nanocrystallography characterization methods for such small nanoparticles. Although experimentally feasible for cubic nanocrystals with lattice constants larger than 0.4 nm in contemporary high-resolution TEMs with modest tilt range, image-based nanocrystallography by means of transmission electron goniometry has so far only been employed by a few specialists worldwide. This is likely to change in the future with the availability of aberration-corrected TEMs.