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Transmission Electron Microscopy

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In 1931, physicist Ernst Ruska—building on the idea that magnetic fields can direct an electron beam just as lenses can direct a beam of light in an optical microscope—developed the first prototype of the electron microscope. This development led to the development of the field of electron microscopy. In the transmission electron microscope (TEM), electrons are produced by a hot tungsten element and accelerated by a potential difference in an electron gun, which gives them up to 400 keV in...

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Scanning Electron Microscopy

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Updated: Jun 12, 2026

Quantitative Atomic-Site Analysis of Functional Dopants/Point Defects in Crystalline Materials by Electron-Channeling-Enhanced Microanalysis

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Coherent electron interference from amorphous TEM specimens.

Rodney A Herring¹, Koh Saitoh, Nobuo Tanaka

¹CAMTEC, MENG, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. rherring@uvic.ca

Journal of Electron Microscopy

|June 1, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers achieved coherent electron interference patterns from amorphous materials using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This breakthrough enables phase information retrieval for atomic structure determination and TEM spatial resolution measurement.

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Quantitative Atomic-Site Analysis of Functional Dopants/Point Defects in Crystalline Materials by Electron-Channeling-Enhanced Microanalysis

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Area of Science:

* Physics
* Materials Science
* Electron Microscopy

Background:

* Determining the atomic structure of amorphous materials is challenging due to their disordered nature.
* Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful tool for materials analysis, but obtaining phase information from amorphous samples has been limited.
* Diffracted beam interferometry has been explored for coherent imaging, but its application to amorphous materials was previously unproven.

Purpose of the Study:

* To demonstrate the existence of electron coherence in amorphous TEM specimens.
* To obtain phase information from amorphous materials for atomic structure analysis.
* To develop a new method for determining the spatial resolution of TEM.

Main Methods:

* Utilized a wavefront splitting method with diffracted beam interferometry.
* Employed an electron biprism to control the angular overlap of interfering electron beams.
* Analyzed electron intensity patterns on the diffraction plane of amorphous TEM specimens.

Main Results:

* Successfully produced interference fringes from the electron intensity of amorphous specimens.
* Observed fringes across a wide range of electron-scattering angles.
* Demonstrated that fringe spatial frequency is dependent on the angular overlap of interfering beams.

Conclusions:

* Electron intensity from amorphous TEM samples exhibits sufficient coherence for interferometric fringe generation.
* This technique allows for the retrieval of phase information crucial for understanding amorphous material atomic structures.
* The interference phenomenon provides a novel method for assessing TEM spatial resolution.