Spherical Aberration-corrected High-resolution Transmission Research Articles

Crystallization of TiO₂ Nanotubes by In Situ Heating TEM.

The thermally-induced crystallization of anodically grown TiO2 amorphous nanotubes has been studied so far under ambient pressure conditions by techniques such as differential scanning calorimetry and in situ X-ray diffraction, then looking at the overall response of several thousands of nanotubes in a carpet arrangement. Here we report a study of this phenomenon based on an in situ transmission electron microscopy approach that uses a twofold strategy. First, a group of some tens of TiO2 amorphous nanotubes was heated looking at their electron diffraction pattern change versus temperature, in order to determine both the initial temperature of crystallization and the corresponding crystalline phases. Second, the experiment was repeated on groups of few nanotubes, imaging their structural evolution in the direct space by spherical aberration-corrected high resolution transmission electron microscopy. These studies showed that, differently from what happens under ambient pressure conditions, under the microscope’s high vacuum (p < 10−5 Pa) the crystallization of TiO2 amorphous nanotubes starts from local small seeds of rutile and brookite, which then grow up with the increasing temperature. Besides, the crystallization started at different temperatures, namely 450 and 380 °C, when the in situ heating was performed irradiating the sample with electron beam energy of 120 or 300 keV, respectively. This difference is due to atomic knock-on effects induced by the electron beam with diverse energy.

Local symmetry breaking of a thin crystal structure of -Si3N4 as revealed by spherical aberration corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy images

This report is an extension of the study for structural imaging of 5-6 nm thick β-Si(3)N(4) [0001] crystal with a spherical aberration corrected transmission electron microscope by Zhang and Kaiser [2009. Structure imaging of β-Si(3)N(4) by spherical aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Ultramicroscopy 109, 1114-1120]. In this work, a local symmetry breaking with an uneven resolution of dumbbells in the six-membered rings revealed in the reported images in the study of Zhang and Kaiser has been analyzed in detail. It is found that this local asymmetry in the image basically is not relevant to a slight mistilt of the specimen and/or a beam tilt (coma). Rather the certain variation of the tetrahedral bond length of Si-N(4) in the crystal structure is found to be responsible for the uneven resolution with a local structural variation from region to region. This characteristic of the variation is also supposed to give a distorted lattice of apparently 2°-2.5° deviations from the perfect hexagonal unit cell as observed in the reported image in the work of Zhang and Kaiser. It is discussed that this variation may prevail only in a thin specimen with a thickness ranging ~≤ 5-6 nm. At the same time, it is noted that the average of the bond length variation is close to the fixed length known in a bulk crystal of β-Si(3)N(4).