The Study of Nanovolumes of Amorphous Materials Using Electron Scattering

Abstract

Many of the structural elements of importance in materials applications (e.g., thin films, barrier layers, intergranular films in ceramics) are small in volume and amorphous. Although the characterization of the structure of amorphous materials by X-ray and neutron diffraction methods is well established, these techniques are not suitable for studies of nanovolumes of materials because of the relatively small scattering cross sections. This chapter reviews recent developments in electron techniques, and particularly electron diffraction, for overcoming this problem.

A High‐Capacity Cathode for Lithium Batteries Consisting of Porous Microspheres of Highly Amorphized Iron Fluoride Densified from Its Open Parent Phase

“…Pair distribution functions (PDFs) were extracted by applying a sine Fourier transformation of onedimensional profi les of the obtained diffraction patterns. [ 14 ] The structural evolution after annealing at different temperatures in argon atmosphere was detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) using a Philips PW3710 (40 kV/30 mA) diffractometer with Cu-K α radiation. Thermogravimetric analyses coupled with mass spectroscopy (TGA-MS) were carried out by a NETZSCH TG 209 at a heating rate of 5 K min − 1 under nitrogen atmosphere.…”

Correlations between the mechanical loss and atomic structure of amorphous TiO2-doped Ta2O5 coatings

“…The RDF is computed by the Fourier transform of the averaged reduced scattering intensity and gives a statistical distribution of atoms in the material with regards to a central atom. The full details of the analytical procedures used for the calculation from experimental diffraction data have already been described in detail elsewhere [13,14].…”

Radial distribution function imaging by STEM diffraction: Phase mapping and analysis of heterogeneous nanostructured glasses

“…The spatial resolution can be improved further by utilization electron diffraction techniques in a transmission electron microscope (TEM), where RDF measurements sampling an area of hundreds nanometer can be easily achieved by selected area electron diffraction (SAED) [12] [13]. However, SAED still averages relatively large sample areas and hides plenty of information in the averaged signal.…”

“…Figure 1 (c to e) schematically describes the procedure to compute the RDF from the experimental diffraction patterns. Details with the theoretical background for RDF extraction from diffraction patterns are given in [12] [13]. In the current work, the diffraction patterns were integrated azimuthally to obtain radius profiles I(s) (figure 1c), where s = 2θ/λ, θ is half of the scattering angle and λ the incident wavelength.…”