Advanced techniques in automated high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy

Alexander J Pattison; Cassio C S Pedroso; Bruce E Cohen; Justin C Ondry; A Paul Alivisatos; Wolfgang Theis; Peter Ercius

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/acf938

Advanced techniques in automated high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy

Nanotechnology. 2023 Oct 20;35(1). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/acf938.

Authors

Alexander J Pattison¹, Cassio C S Pedroso¹, Bruce E Cohen^{1

2}, Justin C Ondry^{3

4

5}, A Paul Alivisatos^{3

4

5

6

7}, Wolfgang Theis⁸, Peter Ercius¹

Affiliations

¹ Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States of America.
² Division of Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States of America.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States of America.
⁴ Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute, Berkeley, CA, United States of America.
⁵ Department of Chemistry and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States of America.
⁶ Material Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States of America.
⁷ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States of America.
⁸ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom.

PMID: 37703845
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/acf938

Abstract

Scanning transmission electron microscopy is a common tool used to study the atomic structure of materials. It is an inherently multimodal tool allowing for the simultaneous acquisition of multiple information channels. Despite its versatility, however, experimental workflows currently rely heavily on experienced human operators and can only acquire data from small regions of a sample at a time. Here, we demonstrate a flexible pipeline-based system for high-throughput acquisition of atomic-resolution structural data using an all-piezo sample stage applied to large-scale imaging of nanoparticles and multimodal data acquisition. The system is available as part of the user program of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Keywords: 4D-STEM; Bayesian optimization; automation; scanning transmission electron microscopy.