Effect of electron beam irradiation on the temperature of single AuGe nanoparticles in a TEM

Knowledge of the actual temperature of nanoparticles under electron beam irradiation is of growing demand for in situ TEM studies. In this work, we addressed the problem with an experimental study of the temperature increment of single AuGe nanoparticles in a TEM and a STEM. The two-phase hemispherical AuGe nanoparticles were formed by the dewetting of an Au/Ge film on a SiN_x substrate. The nanoparticles were thermally cycled in an electron microscope in the 293-653 K temperature range, under a wide range of electron beam currents. The jump-like change of the morphology of the AuGe nanoparticles at melting was used as a temperature label. The melting-crystallization process in binary alloy nanoparticles is fully reversible, with a large temperature hysteresis. It could be repeated on the same nanoparticle, providing a simple and robust way to measure the local temperature increment induced by the electron beam. It was shown that the temperature of the AuGe nanoparticles rose linearly with the e-beam current density J, and the temperature increment reached 25 K at J ∼ 1.8 × 10⁶ A/m² in the TEM. Given a fully known specimen geometry, the temperature increment was calculated when using theoretical approaches and compared with the experimental observations. As a result, recommendations for the assessment of real temperature in similar configurations were provided. In the STEM mode, no change in the temperature of the nanoparticles was registered at conventional parameters of the electron beam and the raster scans, which makes this mode preferable for in situ studies of metal and alloy nanoparticles.