Ultrafast electron diffraction**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11774409), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CBA01501), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Nos. XDB16010200 and XDB07030300).

Abstract

Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) technique has proven to be an innovative tool for providing new insights in lattice dynamics with unprecedented temporal and spatial sensitivities. In this article, we give a brief introduction of this technique using the proposed UED station in the Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility (SECUF) as a prototype. We briefly discussed UED’s functionality, working principle, design consideration, and main components. We also briefly reviewed several pioneer works with UED to study structure-function correlations in several research areas. With these efforts, we endeavor to raise the awareness of this tool among those researchers, who may not yet have realized the emerging opportunities offered by this technique.