Prospects of atomic resolution imaging with an aberration-corrected STEM

Abstract

We investigated high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) images obtained from a microscope equipped with a spherical aberration corrector. The probe size (full-width at half-maximum) is reduced to 0.76 A at 200 kV by assuming the fifth-order spherical aberration coefficient C5 = 100 mm. For the simulation we have used the recently developed scheme for a STEM image simulation based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) multislice algorithm. The peak-to-background (P/B) ratio of the high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF) image is significantly improved at a thin specimen region. Although the P/B ratio becomes worse at a thicker region, the resolution is kept high even at such a region. An almost true HAADF signal will be obtained even from a weak-scattering phosphorous column in InP [001] when the background is subtracted. In the bright-field image the coherent character of elastic scattering is suppressed by averaging over a large convergence angle, making the specimen effectively self-luminous. The claim that HAADF imaging is relatively insensitive to a defocus as well as a specimen thickness is valid only qualitatively, and a detailed image simulation will be required for a quantitative analysis as in the case of the conventional transmission electron microscope. It was noted that the delta function approximation for the object function may not be applicable for a very fine probe, and that the achievable resolution of the HAADF imaging will be limited by the widths of the high-angle thermal diffuse scattering potential.