Concurrent phase retrieval for imaging strain in nanocrystals

Abstract

Coherent diffraction imaging is a form of microscopy that permits high resolution imaging of atomic displacements from equilibrium where the use of conventional optics is not feasible. Approaches to date for the recovery of atomic displacements from equilibrium and subsequently strain information occur after phase reconstruction of the complex real-space images from at least three independent Bragg diffraction amplitude measurements. While this is a more accessible and effective approach to recover strain information, there is potential for erroneous results if the recovered phase information is not carefully treated. Here we present a strategy for imaging strain with coherent x-rays that eliminates the technical challenges that exist in conventional approaches by constructing the strain field concurrently during the phase retrieval process of recovering phase information.

Refinements for Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction imaging: Electron backscatter diffraction alignment and strain field computation

“…This will play an important role in the analysis of large MBCDI datasets, such as those obtained from in situ or in operando experiments that reveal crystal defects interacting with their environment. Reconstruction accuracy in multi-Bragg peak phase retrieval algorithms that involve a shared displacement field constraint applied to all reflections would also be improved by implementing this more accurate interpolation of phase values (Newton, 2020;Gao et al, 2021;Wilkin et al, 2021).…”

“…The indexing is performed using texture analysis and relies on the samples to be well-faceted to produce truncation rods in reciprocal space that are perpendicular to facet surfaces. These pre-alignment protocols have not only led to increased popularity of MBCDI for determination of the full strain tensor (Yang et al, 2022;Hofmann et al, 2020;Hofmann et al, 2017b;Hofmann et al, 2018;Phillips et al, 2020), but also enabled simultaneous, multi-Bragg peak phase retrieval procedures to increase reconstruction quality (Newton, 2020;Gao et al, 2021;Wilkin et al, 2021).…”

Three-dimensional domain identification in a single hexagonal manganite nanocrystal

“…However, advancements in the field have facilitated the development of Multi-BCDI. This innovative approach allows for the concurrent analysis of multiple Bragg peaks from a single nanoparticle, thereby enabling the effective reconstruction of vector-valued lattice distortion fields within nanoscale crystals 33 – 36 .…”

Refinements for Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction imaging: electron backscatter diffraction alignment and strain field computation

“…This will play an important role in the analysis of large MBCDI data sets, such as those obtained from in situ or operando experiments that reveal crystal defects interacting with their environment. Reconstruction accuracy in multi-Bragg-peak phase retrieval algorithms that involve a shared displacement field constraint applied to all reflections would also be improved by implementing this more accurate interpolation of phase values (Newton, 2020;Gao et al, 2021;Wilkin et al, 2021).…”

“…The indexing is performed using texture analysis and relies on the samples being well faceted to produce truncation rods in reciprocal space that are perpendicular to the facet surfaces. These prealignment protocols have not only led to the increased popularity of MBCDI for determination of the full strain tensor with respect to an arbitrary reference (Yang et al, 2022;Hofmann et al, 2017bHofmann et al, , 2018Hofmann et al, , 2020Phillips et al, 2020) but also enabled simultaneous multi-Bragg-peak phase retrieval procedures to increase reconstruction quality (Newton, 2020;Gao et al, 2021;Wilkin et al, 2021).…”