Three-dimensional coordinates of individual atoms in materials revealed by electron tomography

Xu, Rui; Chen, Chien-Chun; Wu, Li; Scott, M. C.; Theis, W.; Ophus, Colin; Bartels, Matthias; Yang, Yongsoo; Ramezani-Dakhel, Hadi; Sawaya, Michael R.; Heinz, Hendrik; Marks, Laurence D.; Ercius, Peter; Miao, Jianwei

doi:10.1038/nmat4426

Title: Three-dimensional coordinates of individual atoms in materials revealed by electron tomography

Journal Article · Mon Sep 21 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Nature Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4426· OSTI ID:1440914

Xu, Rui ^[1]; Chen, Chien-Chun ^[2]; Wu, Li ^[1]; Scott, M. C. ^[1]; Theis, W. ^[3]; Ophus, Colin ^[4]; Bartels, Matthias ^[1]; Yang, Yongsoo ^[1]; Ramezani-Dakhel, Hadi ^[5]; Sawaya, Michael R. ^[6]; Heinz, Hendrik ^[5]; Marks, Laurence D. ^[7]; Ercius, Peter ^[4]; Miao, Jianwei ^[1]

Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics & Astronomy. California NanoSystems Inst.
Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics & Astronomy. California NanoSystems Inst.; National Sun Yat-sen Univ., Kaohsiung (Taiwan). Dept. of Physics
Univ. of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Nanoscale Physics Research Lab. School of Physics and Astronomy
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Center for Electron Microscopy. Molecular Foundry
Univ. of Akron, OH (United States). Dept. of Polymer Engineering
UCLA-DOE Inst. of Genomics and Proteomics, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Howard Hughes Medical Inst.
Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL (United States). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering

Crystallography, the primary method for determining the 3D atomic positions in crystals, has been fundamental to the development of many fields of science. However, the atomic positions obtained from crystallography represent a global average of many unit cells in a crystal. In this paper, we report, for the first time, the determination of the 3D coordinates of thousands of individual atoms and a point defect in a material by electron tomography with a precision of ~19 pm, where the crystallinity of the material is not assumed. From the coordinates of these individual atoms, we measure the atomic displacement field and the full strain tensor with a 3D resolution of ~1 nm³ and a precision of ~10^-3, which are further verified by density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations. Finally, the ability to precisely localize the 3D coordinates of individual atoms in materials without assuming crystallinity is expected to find important applications in materials science, nanoscience, physics, chemistry and biology.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); Office of Naval Research (ONR) (United States)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; FG02-13ER46943; FG02-01ER45945; DMR-1437263; DMR-0955071; N00014-14-1-0675

OSTI ID:: 1440914

Journal Information:: Nature Materials, Vol. 14, Issue 11; ISSN 1476-1122

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 121 works

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