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Updated: Jul 10, 2025

Preparation and Observation of Thick Biological Samples by Scanning Transmission Electron Tomography
Published on: March 12, 2017
Direct imaging of electron density with a scanning transmission electron microscope
Ondrej Dyck1, Jawaher Almutlaq2, David Lingerfelt3
1Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA. dyckoe@ornl.gov.
Abstract:
Recent studies of secondary electron (SE) emission in scanning transmission electron microscopes suggest that material's properties such as electrical conductivity, connectivity, and work function can be probed with atomic scale resolution using a technique known as secondary electron e-beam-induced current (SEEBIC). Here, we apply the SEEBIC imaging technique to a stacked 2D heterostructure device to reveal the spatially resolved electron density of an encapsulated WSe2 layer. We find that the double Se lattice site shows higher emission than the W site, which is at odds with first-principles modelling of valence ionization of an isolated WSe2 cluster. These results illustrate that atomic level SEEBIC contrast within a single material is possible and that an enhanced understanding of atomic scale SE emission is required to account for the observed contrast. In turn, this suggests that, in the future, subtle information about interlayer bonding and the effect on electron orbitals could be directly revealed with this technique.
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