Multi-angle Precession Electron Diffraction (MAPED): A Versatile Approach to 4D-STEM Precession

Journal Article · Wed Nov 12 00:00:00 EST 2025 · Microscopy and Microanalysis

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mam/ozaf103· OSTI ID:3005979

Ribet, Stephanie M; Dhall, Rohan; Ophus, Colin; Bustillo, Karen C

Precession of a converged beam during acquisition of a 4D-STEM dataset improves strain, orientation, and phase mapping accuracy by averaging over continuous angles of illumination. Precession experiments usually rely on integrated systems, where automatic alignments lead to fast, high-quality results. The dependence of these experiments on specific hardware and software is evident even when switching to nonintegrated detectors on a precession tool, as experimental set-up becomes challenging and time-consuming. Here, we introduce multi-angle precession electron diffraction (MAPED): a method to perform electron diffraction by collecting sequential 4D-STEM scans at different incident beam tilts. The multiple diffraction datasets are averaged together postacquisition, resulting in a single dataset that minimizes the impact of the curvature and orientation of the Ewald sphere relative to the crystal under study. Our results demonstrate that even four additional tilts improved measurement of material properties, namely strain and orientation, as compared to single-tilt 4D-STEM experiments. We show the versatility and flexibility of our MAPED approach with data collected on a number of microscopes with different hardware configurations and a variety of detectors.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22), Scientific User Facilities Division (SC-22.3 )
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 3005979
• Journal Information: Microscopy and Microanalysis, Journal Name: Microscopy and Microanalysis Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 31
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

4D-STEM
MAPED
orientation
precession electron diffraction
strain