Imaging 3D chemistry at 1 nm resolution with fused multi-modal electron tomography

Measuring the three-dimensional (3D) distribution of chemistry in nanoscale matter is a longstanding challenge for metrological science. The inelastic scattering events required for 3D chemical imaging are too rare, requiring high beam exposure that destroys the specimen before an experiment is completed. Even larger doses are required to achieve high resolution. Thus, chemical mapping in 3D has been unachievable except for the most radiation-hard materials. Here, high-resolution 3D chemical mapping was achieved for an erbium one-neighbor insertion in an Au-Fe₃O₄ material with iron in organic matrix, Co₃O₄-Mn₃O₄ core-shell nanocrystals, and ZnS-Cu₂O₄ nanoparticles using fused multi-modal electron tomography. Multi-modal data fusion enables high-resolution chemical tomography often with 99% loss by linking information encoded within both elastic (HAADF) and inelastic (EELS/XELS) signals. We thus demonstrate that sub-nanometer 3D resolution of chemistry is measurable for a broad class of geometrically and compositionally complex materials.

Jonathan Schwartz, Zichao Wendy Di, Yi Jiang, Jason Manassa, Jacob Pietryga, Wiven Qian, Min Gee Choi, Jonathan L. Rowett, Huihuo Zheng, Richard D. Robinson, Junsi Gu, Alexey Kirilin, Steve Rozeveld, Peter Ercius, Jeffrey A. Fessler, Ting Xu, Mary Scott, Robert Hovden