Point group symmetry of cadmium arsenide thin films determined by convergent beam electron diffraction

TL;DR

This study uses convergent beam electron diffraction to precisely determine the point group symmetry of cadmium arsenide thin films, revealing their centrosymmetric tetragonal structure and demonstrating CBED's capability to detect subtle structural differences in topological semimetals.

Contribution

The paper applies CBED combined with imaging and simulations to identify the point group of Cd3As2 thin films, clarifying their crystal symmetry and aiding topological material design.

Findings

Cd3As2 thin films are tetragonal 4/mmm point group

CBED can detect subtle differences in crystal symmetry

Cd3As2 is centrosymmetric, influencing its topological properties

Abstract

Cadmium arsenide (Cd3As2) is one of the first materials to be discovered to belong to the class of three-dimensional topological semimetals. Reported room temperature crystal structures of Cd3As2 reported differ subtly in the way the Cd vacancies are arranged within its antifluorite-derived structure, which determines if an inversion center is present and if Cd3As2 is a Dirac or Weyl semimetal. Here, we apply convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED) to determine the point group of Cd3As2 thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Using CBED patterns from multiple zone axes, high-angle annular dark-field images acquired in scanning transmission electron microscopy, and Bloch wave simulations, we show that Cd3As2 belongs to the tetragonal 4/mmm point group, which is centrosymmetric. The results show that CBED can distinguish very subtle differences in the crystal structure of a topological semimetal, a capability that will be useful for designing materials and thin film heterostructures with topological states that depend on the presence of certain crystal symmetries.