Automated serial electron diffraction: implementation in LibraEDT and its applications

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Crystallography
• Electron Microscopy

Background:

• Serial electron diffraction (SerialED) is a powerful technique for determining the structure of beam-sensitive materials.
• Practical limitations, including manual data acquisition and large dataset management, have hindered widespread adoption of SerialED.
• Automating data collection is crucial for advancing SerialED applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement continuous SerialED (stage-scanning SerialED) for unsupervised data collection.
• To demonstrate the practicality and compatibility of this automated SerialED approach with existing data processing workflows.
• To address the challenges associated with manual data acquisition in SerialED.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of continuous SerialED (stage-scanning) within the LibraEDT software.
• Collection of SerialED datasets with and without precession.
• Processing of collected datasets using standard computational tools.

Main Results:

• Successful implementation of unsupervised, continuous SerialED data collection.
• Demonstrated compatibility of the automated acquisition strategy with standard SerialED processing software.
• Acquisition strategy proved practical for collecting datasets with and without precession.

Conclusions:

• Continuous SerialED in LibraEDT enables unsupervised data collection, overcoming practical barriers.
• The automated stage-scanning approach is compatible with standard data processing, facilitating wider adoption.
• This advancement makes SerialED more accessible for structure determination of beam-sensitive materials.