The development and applications of ultrafast electron nanocrystallography

TL;DR

This paper reviews ultrafast electron nanocrystallography, highlighting its ability to study structural and charge dynamics in nanoscale materials with atomic resolution, demonstrated through various experimental applications.

Contribution

It introduces a quantitative 3D atomic structure retrieval scheme and showcases the method's versatility for visualizing nanoscale dynamics.

Findings

Demonstrated sensitivity to surface melting of gold nanocrystals

Revealed nonequilibrium transformation of graphite to diamond-like states

Visualized charge and energy redistribution at interfaces

Abstract

We review the development of ultrafast electron nanocrystallography as a method for investigating structural dynamics for nanoscale materials and interfaces. Its sensitivity and resolution are demonstrated in the studies of surface melting of gold nanocrystals, nonequilibrium transformation of graphite into reversible diamond-like intermediates, and molecular scale charge dynamics, showing a versatility for not only determining the structures, but also the charge and energy redistribution at interfaces. A quantitative scheme for three-dimensional retrieval of atomic structures is demonstrated with few-particle (< 1000) sensitivity, establishing this nanocrystallographic method as a tool for directly visualizing dynamics within isolated nanomaterials with atomic scale spatio-temporal resolution.