Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: The transmission electron microscope (TEM) is a powerful tool for structural or chemical characterization of materials with atomic, or even subatomic, spatial resolution. Recent developments in producing electron vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum, spin polarization technology, and aberration correction technology have opened up new doors to image magnetism with high resolution in the TEM. The development of such methods requires a thorough understanding of the effects of magnetic interactions in electron scattering processes. The authors of this paper use a full-fledged description of elastic electron scattering, including magnetic effects, to computationally identify possible magnetic signals from an electron beam scattered through a magnetic solid. Three types of magnetic fingerprints, namely one originating from the orbital angular momentum of electron vortex beams, one from spin polarized beams, and one from the nontrivial phase distributions of aberrated electron beams, are found. The possibility of atomic resolution mapping of magnetism by scanning TEM is investigated and deemed in principle possible, but experimentally challenging, while nanometer resolution magnetic imaging using electron vortex beams is proposed as a realistic goal for future experimental work.
Authors: Alexander Edström, Axel Lubk, Ján Rusz
Institutions: Uppsala University, Technische Universität Dresden
Language: English
Subfield: Structural Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2463045018