Intriguing transmission electron microscopy images observed for perpendicularly oriented cylindrical microdomains of block copolymers

STEM multiplication nano-moiré method with large field of view and high sensitivity

Strain is one of the important factors that determine the photoelectric and mechanical properties of semiconductor materials and devices. In this paper, the scanning transmission electron microscopy multiplication nano-moiré method is proposed to increase the measurement range and sensitivity for strain field. The formation principle, condition, and measurement range of positive and negative multiplication moiré fringes (PMMFs and NMMFs) are analysed in detail here. PMMF generally refers to the multiplication of field of view, NMMF generally refers to the multiplication of displacement measurement sensitivity. Based on the principle of multiplication nano-moiré, Theoretical formulas of the fringe spacing and strain field are derived. Compared with geometric phase analysis of deformation measurements based on high-resolution atom images, both the range of field of view and the sensitivity of displacement measurements of the multiplication moiré method are significantly improved. Most importantly, the area of field of view of the PMMF method is increased by about two orders of magnitude, which is close to micrometre-scale with strain measurement sensitivity of 2 × 10^-5. In addition, In order to improve the quality of moiré fringe and the accuracy of strain measurement, the secondary moiré method is developed.The strain laws at the interface of the InP/InGaAs superlattice materials are characterised using the developed method.

TEM nano-Moiré evaluation for an invisible lattice structure near the grain interface

Moiré technique is a powerful, important and effective tool for scientific research, from the nano-scale to the macro-scale, which is essentially the interference between two or more periodic structures with a similar frequency. In this study, an inverse transmission electron microscopy (TEM) nano-Moiré method has been proposed, for the first time, to reconstruct an invisible lattice structure near the grain interface, where only one kind of lattice structure and Moiré fringe were visible in a high resolution TEM (HRTEM) image simultaneously. The inversion process was performed in detail. Three rules were put forward to ensure the uniqueness of the inversion result. The HRTEM image of a top-coat/thermally grown oxide interface in a thermal barrier coating (TBC) structure was observed with coexisting visible lattice and Moiré fringes. Using the inverse TEM nano-Moiré method, the invisible lower layer lattice was inversed and a 3-dimensional structure near the interface was also reconstructed to some degree. The real strain field of oriented invisible and visible lattices and the relative strain field of the Moiré fringe in the grain and near the grain boundary were obtained simultaneously through the subset geometric phase analysis method. The possible failure mechanism and position of the TBC spallation from the nano-scale to the micro-scale were discussed.