Imaging and thickness measurement of amorphous intergranular films using TEM

Fresnel fringe analysis is shown to be unreliable for grain boundaries in yttrium-doped alumina: the determined thicknesses do not agree well with those measured from high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), the asymmetry between under- and overfocus is very large, and Fresnel fringes are sometimes shown at boundaries which contain no amorphous film. An alternative approach to the analysis of HRTEM images of grain boundary films is demonstrated: Fourier filtering is used to remove the lattice fringes from the image thereby significantly enhancing the visibility of the intergranular films. The apparent film thickness shows a discrepancy between measurements from the original HRTEM image and the filtered image. It was shown that fringe delocalisation and diffuseness of the amorphous/crystalline interfaces will lead to a significant underestimate of the thickness in unprocessed HRTEM images. In contrast to this, the average thickness can be much more accurately measured from the Fourier-filtered image, provided the boundary is oriented accurately edge-on.