Mapping mesoscopic phase evolution during e-beam induced transformations via deep learning of atomically resolved images

TL;DR

This paper introduces a deep learning approach using DCNNs to automatically identify crystal lattice symmetries in atomically-resolved images, enabling real-time analysis of phase transformations during electron beam irradiation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that DCNNs can be trained to recognize diffraction patterns and provides an uncertainty quantification method for real-time phase analysis.

Findings

DCNNs successfully identify Bravais lattice symmetry in simulated and real images.

The method enables tracking of void growth during electron beam exposure.

Uncertainty quantification improves the reliability of phase identification.

Abstract

Understanding transformations under electron beam irradiation requires mapping the structural phases and their evolution in real time. To date, this has mostly been a manual endeavor comprising of difficult frame-by-frame analysis that is simultaneously tedious and prone to error. Here, we turn towards the use of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) to automatically determine the Bravais lattice symmetry present in atomically-resolved images. A DCNN is trained to identify the Bravais lattice class given a 2D fast Fourier transform of the input image. Monte-Carlo dropout is used for determining the prediction probability, and results are shown for both simulated and real atomically-resolved images from scanning tunneling microscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy. A reduced representation of the final layer output allows to visualize the separation of classes in the DCNN and agrees with physical intuition. We then apply the trained network to electron beam-induced transformations in WS2, which allows tracking and determination of growth rate of voids. These results are novel in two ways: (1) It shows that DCNNs can be trained to recognize diffraction patterns, which is markedly different from the typical "real image" cases, and (2) it provides a method with in-built uncertainty quantification, allowing the real-time analysis of phases present in atomically resolved images.