Scanning electron diffraction tomography of strain

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new computational framework for three-dimensional strain tensor reconstruction using scanning electron diffraction tomography, addressing previous limitations in measuring full strain fields at the nanoscale.

Contribution

It develops a formal tensor tomography method for non-symmetric strain tensors from electron diffraction data, including the use of precession techniques.

Findings

Reconstruction of full 3D strain tensor fields is feasible with the proposed method.

Precession electron diffraction enhances the accuracy of strain tomography.

The framework is validated analytically and through computational simulations.

Abstract

Strain engineering is used to obtain desirable materials properties in a range of modern technologies. Direct nanoscale measurement of the three-dimensional strain tensor field within these materials has however been limited by a lack of suitable experimental techniques and data analysis tools. Scanning electron diffraction has emerged as a powerful tool for obtaining two-dimensional maps of strain components perpendicular to the incident electron beam direction. Extension of this method to recover the full three-dimensional strain tensor field has been restricted though by the absence of a formal framework for tensor tomography using such data. Here, we show that it is possible to reconstruct the full non-symmetric strain tensor field as the solution to an ill-posed tensor tomography inverse problem. We then demonstrate the properties of this tomography problem both analytically and computationally, highlighting why incorporating precession to perform scanning precession electron diffraction may be important. We establish a general framework for non-symmetric tensor tomography and demonstrate computationally its applicability for achieving strain tomography with scanning precession electron diffraction data.