Low-dose electron diffraction tomography (LD-EDT)

Stéphanie Kodjikian; Holger Klein

doi:10.1016/j.ultramic.2019.02.010

Low-dose electron diffraction tomography (LD-EDT)

Ultramicroscopy. 2019 May:200:12-19. doi: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2019.02.010. Epub 2019 Feb 13.

Authors

Stéphanie Kodjikian¹, Holger Klein²

Affiliations

¹ Université Grenoble Alpes and CNRS, Institut Néel, 38000 Grenoble, France.
² Université Grenoble Alpes and CNRS, Institut Néel, 38000 Grenoble, France. Electronic address: holger.klein@neel.cnrs.fr.

PMID: 30797182
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultramic.2019.02.010

Abstract

A new electron diffraction tomography method is presented that is aimed to enable high performance electron crystallography experiments on beam sensitive materials using a standard TEM without any special equipment. Low-dose electron diffraction tomography minimizes the electron dose necessary for obtaining data sets suitable for structure solution by irradiating the crystal exclusively during the acquisition of the diffraction patterns. The performance of the method is successfully tested on two model structures, a complex oxide Sr₅CuGe₉O₂₄ and the beam sensitive metal-organic framework (MOF) of manganese formiate. Even when the limited lifetime of a beam sensitive material only allows obtaining a data set of rather low completeness, the data quality is high enough for the structures to be solved to a high precision. Low-dose electron diffraction tomography is easy to implement and doesn't require any special equipment or lengthy calibration processes, making it accessible to a large number of scientists.

Keywords: Direct methods; Electron diffraction tomography; Low dose; New method; Precession electron diffraction; Sensitive material; Structure solution.