Linear chemically sensitive electron tomography using DualEELS and compressed sensing

Abstract

Electron tomography (ET) is now increasingly important for recovering the three-dimensional (3D) morphology of nanostructured materials in the physical and life sciences. ET typically involves the acquisition of a set of two-dimensional projection images at different tilts using (scanning) transmission electron microscopy ([S]TEM), followed by alignment and reconstruction using established algorithms to reconstruct a 3D volume that represent the physical morphology or 3D distribution of some other property of the specimen under investigation. In principle, the methodology is independent of the nature of the images and is applicable to any imaging technique that fulfils the projection requirement [1] such that the signal should change monotonically with the physical property of the sample. This condition is approximately fulfilled for mass-thickness contrast in bright field TEM of amorphous biological specimens, and high angle annular dark field (HAADF) STEM imaging of thin specimens. Consequently, both imaging techniques have been widely used in ET.