Fast versus conventional HAADF-STEM tomography: advantages and challenges

TL;DR

This paper compares fast and conventional HAADF-STEM tomography methods, evaluating their speed, resolution, and electron dose to improve 3D nanostructure analysis efficiency.

Contribution

It experimentally compares various acquisition strategies for electron tomography, highlighting their advantages and challenges in terms of speed, resolution, and dose reduction.

Findings

Fast acquisition methods significantly reduce imaging time.

Continuous tilt strategies lower electron dose.

Trade-offs exist between speed and resolution.

Abstract

Electron tomography is a widely used experimental technique for analyzing nanometer-scale structures of a large variety of materials in three dimensions. Unfortunately, the acquisition of conventional electron tomography tilt series can easily take up one hour or more, depending on the complexity of the experiment. Using electron tomography, it is therefore far from straightforward to obtain statistically meaningful 3D data, to investigate samples that do not withstand long acquisition, or to perform in situ 3D characterization using this technique. Various acquisition strategies have been proposed to accelerate the tomographic acquisition, and reduce the required electron dose. These methods include tilting the holder continuously while acquiring a projection movie and a hybrid, incremental, methodology which combines the benefits of the conventional and continuous technique. In this paper, the different acquisition strategies will be experimentally compared in terms of speed, resolution and electron dose, based on experimental tilt series acquired for various metallic nanoparticles.