Extending Energy-Filtered Transmission Electron Microscopy (EFTEM) into Three Dimensions Using Electron Tomography

The length scales on which materials microstructures are being formed, grown, and even designed are becoming increasingly small and increasingly three-dimensional. For such complex structures two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis is often inadequate and occasionally misleading. One approach to this problem is the modification of electron tomography techniques, developed for structural biology, for use in materials science. Energy-Filtered (EF) TEM elemental distribution images approximate to true projections of structure, and, as such, can be used to reconstruct the three-dimensional distribution of chemical species. A sample holder has been modified to allow the high tilt (±60°) required for tomography and a semiautomatic acquisition script designed to manage energy-loss acquisition. Tilt series data sets have been acquired from two widely different experimental systems, Cr carbides in 316 stainless steel and magnetite nanocrystals in magnetotactic bacteria, demonstrating single- and multiple-element tomography. It is shown that both elemental maps and jump-ratio images are suitable for reconstruction, despite the effects of diffraction contrast in the former and thickness changes in the latter. It is concluded that the image contrast, signal, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are key to the achievable reconstruction quality and, as such, the technique may be of limited value for high energy loss/small inelastic cross section edges.