Digital Electron Microscopy on Advanced Materials

Digital electron microscopy has been developed and applied to the structure analysis of advanced materials such as semiconductors and alloys. First of all, quantitative high-resolution electron microscopy was carried out on a Z-type faulted dipole in GaAs with the through-focus method. Through the quantitative analysis of the high-resolution images, the atomic displacement around the stacking fault was accurately evaluated. In the analysis of electron diffraction patterns of a Cu0.725Pd0.275 alloy, an energy filter was utilized to obtain electron diffraction patterns with a small background removing the inelastically scattered electrons. From the analysis of diffuse scattering of the Cu0.725Pd0.275 alloy, the short-range order parameters were quantitatively evaluated. Finally, it is pointed out that, based on the digital data of electron microscope images, the construction of the data base such as “EMILIA” (Electron Microscope Image Library and Archive: http://asma7.iamp.tohoku.ac.jp/EMILIA) is quite important for the future research of advanced materials characterization.