Nanomaterial datasets to advance tomography in scanning transmission electron microscopy

TL;DR

This paper provides five high-quality, open-access STEM tomography datasets of nanoscale materials, enabling the development and validation of advanced 3D reconstruction methods in materials science.

Contribution

It introduces a set of five comprehensive, high-quality experimental datasets for STEM tomography, addressing the lack of open data and supporting algorithm development.

Findings

Datasets include complex nanostructures with full 180° tilt series.

Reconstructed 3D volumes are provided for benchmarking.

Datasets facilitate advancements in reconstruction and visualization techniques.

Abstract

Electron tomography in materials science has flourished with the demand to characterize nanoscale materials in three dimensions (3D). Access to experimental data is vital for developing and validating reconstruction methods that improve resolution and reduce radiation dose requirements. This work presents five high-quality scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) tomography datasets in order to address the critical need for open access data in this field. The datasets represent the current limits of experimental technique, are of high quality, and contain materials with structural complexity. Included are tomographic series of a hyperbranched Co2P nanocrystal, platinum nanoparticles on a carbon nanofibre imaged over the complete 180{\deg} tilt range, a platinum nanoparticle and a tungsten needle both imaged at atomic resolution by equal slope tomography, and a through-focal tilt series of PtCu nanoparticles. A volumetric reconstruction from every dataset is provided for comparison and development of post-processing and visualization techniques. Researchers interested in creating novel data processing and reconstruction algorithms will now have access to state of the art experimental test data.