Successful application of Low Voltage Electron Microscopy to practical materials problems

Low-voltage High-Resolution Electron Microscopy (LVHREM) has several advantages, including increased cross-sections for inelastic and elastic scattering, increased contrast per electron, decreased delocalization effects and reduced knock-on damage. Imaging at differing voltages has shown advantages for imaging materials that are knock-on damage sensitive. We show experimentally that different materials systems benefit from low voltage high-resolution microscopy. There are advantages for imaging single layer materials such as graphene at below the knock-on threshold; we present an example of imaging a graphene sheet at 40kV. We have also examined mesoporous silica decorated with Pd nanoparticles and carbon black functionalized with Pd/Pt nanoparticles. In these cases we show that the lower voltage imaging maintains the structure of the surrounding matrix during imaging, whereas aberration correction provides the higher resolution for imaging the nanoparticle lattice. Perhaps surprisingly we show that zeolites damage preferentially by ionization effects (radiolysis). The current literature suggests that below incident energies of 40kV the damage is mainly radiolitic, whereas at incident energies above 200kV the knock-on damage and material sputtering will be the dominant effect. Our experimental observations support this conclusion and the effects we have observed at 40kV are not indicative of knock-on damage. Other nanoscale materials such as thin silicon nanowires also benefit from lower voltage imaging. LVHREM imaging provides an excellent option to avoid beam damage to nanowires; our results suggest that LVHREM is suitable for nanowire-biological composites. Our experimental observations serve as a clear demonstration that even at 40keV accelerating voltage, LVHREM can be used without inducing beam damage to locate dislocations and other crystalline defects, which may have adverse effects on nanowire device performance. Low voltage operation will likely become the new mode of imaging for many electron microscopes, with the instrument being, in essence, tuned to extract all the information possible from each electron that transits the sample.