Scanning electron diffraction tomography of strain. (3rd December 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tovey, Robert; Johnstone, Duncan N; Collins, Sean M; Lionheart, William R B; Midgley, Paul A; Benning, Martin; Schönlieb, Carola-Bibiane
• Is Part Of: Inverse problems. Volume 37:Number 1(2021)
• Publication Date: 2020-12-03
• Subjects: transverse ray transform -- computed tomography -- tensor tomography -- scanning precession electron diffraction -- 4D-STEM -- strain mapping -- strain tomography; Inverse problems (Differential equations) -- Periodicals; 515.357
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6420/abc961
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0266-5611

Abstract

Abstract: Strain engineering is used to obtain desirable materials properties in a range of modern technologies. Direct nanoscale measurement of the three-dimensional strain tensor field within these materials has however been limited by a lack of suitable experimental techniques and data analysis tools. Scanning electron diffraction has emerged as a powerful tool for obtaining two-dimensional maps of strain components perpendicular to the incident electron beam direction. Extension of this method to recover the full three-dimensional strain tensor field has been restricted though by the absence of a formal framework for tensor tomography using such data. Here, we show that it is possible to reconstruct the full non-symmetric strain tensor field as the solution to an ill-posed tensor tomography inverse problem. We then demonstrate the properties of this tomography problem both analytically and computationally, highlighting why incorporating precession to perform scanning precession electron diffraction (SPED) may be important. We establish a general framework for non-symmetric tensor tomography and demonstrate computationally its applicability for achieving strain tomography with SPED data.