Three dimensional classification of dislocations from single projections

Abstract

Many material properties are governed by dislocations and their interactions. The reconstruction of the three-dimensional structure of a dislocation network so far is mainly achieved by tomographic tilt series with high angular ranges, which is experimentally challenging and additionally puts constraints on possible specimen geometries. Here, we show a way to reveal the three dimensional location of dislocations and simultaneously classify their type from single 4D scanning transmission electron microscopy measurements. The dislocation’s strain field causes inter-band scattering between the electron’s Bloch waves within the crystal. This scattering in turn results in characteristic interference patterns with sufficient information to identify the dislocations type and depth in beam direction by comparison with multi-beam calculations. We expect the presented measurement principle will lead to fully automated methods for reconstruction of the three dimensional strain fields from such measurements with a wide range of applications in material and physical sciences and engineering.