Measuring the Thin Film Strain Tensor Near Aluminum Grain Boundaries via a New Image Processing Approach to CBED HOLZ Patterns

1999 ◽  
Vol 589 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Inoue ◽  
A. F. Schwartzman ◽  
L. B. Freund

AbstractHOLZ lines formed in a CBED pattern provide the most accurate means to measure a local strain tensor with high spatial resolution over mesoscopic length scales. With the advent of energy-filtering in a field-emission TEM, the precision of this measurement increases by filtering out the inelastically scattered electrons. This paper presents an alternate approach to obtaining the same increased precision by image processing of CBED patterns formed in a conventional LaB6 microscope. This technique results in the determination of the full strain tensor within ±0.01%. It is based on developing a Wiener filter for CBED patterns, deconvoluting the point spread function of the CCD camera, using the Hough transform to measure distances between HOLZ line intersections, and subtracting out an experimentally determined projector lens distortion. The present technique has been used to measure the strain tensor for the two types of grain boundaries found in MBE grown Al thin films on Si which have the mazed bicrystal microstructure.

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1699-1707 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bouscaud ◽  
A. Morawiec ◽  
R. Pesci ◽  
S. Berveiller ◽  
E. Patoor

Kossel microdiffraction in a scanning electron microscope enables determination of local elastic strains. With Kossel patterns recorded by a CCD camera and some automation of the strain determination process, this technique may become a convenient tool for analysis of strains. As for all strain determination methods, critical for the applicability of the Kossel technique is its strain resolution. The resolution was estimated in a number of ways: from the simplest tests based on simulated patterns (of an Ni alloy), through analysis of sharp experimental patterns of Ge, to estimates obtained byin situtensile straining of single crystals of the Ni-based superalloy. In the latter case, the results were compared with those of conventional X-ray diffraction and synchrotron-based Kossel diffraction. In the case of high-quality Ge patterns, a resolution of 1 × 10−4was reached for all strain tensor components; this corresponds to a stress of about 10 MPa. With relatively diffuse patterns from the strained Ni-based superalloy, under the assumption of plane stress, the strain and stress resolutions were 3 × 10−4and 60 MPa, respectively. Experimental and computational conditions for achieving these resolutions are described. The study shows potential perspectives and limits of the applicability of semiautomatic Kossel microdiffraction as a method of local strain determination.


Author(s):  
Evren U. Azeloglu ◽  
Glenn R. Gaudette ◽  
Irvin B. Krukenkamp ◽  
Fu-Pen Chiang

Unlike many other engineering designs, the heart, a pressure vessel, shows variations within its chambers and surface in terms of mechanical function. This necessitates a whole field technique with high spatial resolution. Computer aided speckle interferometry (CASI), a nondestructive examination technique, is herein developed for this purpose. A speckle pattern was created on the surface of isolated rabbit hearts. Images of the beating hearts werc acquired with a charge-couple device (CCD) camera for one second at a rate of 50 frames per second. CASI was used to determine the 2-D displacement vectors over regions of approximately 4 × 6 mm. Regional area stroke work (the integral of the left ventricular pressure with respect to area), the first invariant of the 2-D strain tensor, and the principle strains were used to determine the regional function. After occluding the blood supply to a region of the heart, significant changes were detected in all the previously mentioned parameters. Commonly used techniques cannot determine 2-D strain and lack the high spatial resolution of CASI. Determination of the 2-D strain can provide useful data on the functionality of the heart.


Author(s):  
A.L. Weickenmeier ◽  
W. Nüchter ◽  
J. Mayer

Introduction The modulation transfer function (MTF) of a slow-scan CCD camera (Gatan modell 679 attached to our Zeiss EM 912 Omega) has been determined with high precision for the standard and the new anti-reflection YAG scintillator. It is shown that deconvolution of experimental patterns allows the reconstruction of image details down to pixel size. From the analysis of deconvoluted noise patterns we found that for this camera the detection quantum efficiency (DQE) is 0.6 in the typical working range of 300 to 3000 electrons per pixel and does not depend on the scintillator. A full discussion of this work can be found in.Experiment To determine the point spread function (PSF) we punched a hole in a sheet film holder which then was partially covered by one or two knife edges (slit). These masks were projected onto the scintillator. About 600 line scans perpendicular to the edge or slit were extracted and averaged to reduce noise (Fig. 1).


Author(s):  
Xiaodong Zou ◽  
V.G. Zubkov ◽  
Gunnar Svensson ◽  
Sven Hovmöller

High resolution electron microscopy (HREM) combined with crystallographic image processing (CIP) is becoming a powerful technique for solving inorganic structures. With the image processing systems CRISP and ELD, running on a personal computer, this technique can be easily established in other laboratories. HREM images and electron diffraction patterns are digitized by a CCD camera and transferred into a PC. Phases and amplitudes are extracted from the Fourier transform of the HREM images. For thin crystals of metal oxides, the phases obtained by HREM and CIP inside the Scherzer resolution of the microscope are identical to the x-ray structure factor phases.Electron diffraction extends to much higher resolution than EM images (beyond 1 Å). The quality of the amplitudes is also higher than that from images, since ED data is not affected by the contract transfer function (CTF). Amplitudes extracted by ELD are close to x-ray diffraction amplitudes (within 30%).


Author(s):  
D.R. Rasmussen ◽  
N.-H. Cho ◽  
C.B. Carter

Domains in GaAs can exist which are related to one another by the inversion symmetry, i.e., the sites of gallium and arsenic in one domain are interchanged in the other domain. The boundary between these two different domains is known as an antiphase boundary [1], In the terminology used to describe grain boundaries, the grains on either side of this boundary can be regarded as being Σ=1-related. For the {110} interface plane, in particular, there are equal numbers of GaGa and As-As anti-site bonds across the interface. The equilibrium distance between two atoms of the same kind crossing the boundary is expected to be different from the length of normal GaAs bonds in the bulk. Therefore, the relative position of each grain on either side of an APB may be translated such that the boundary can have a lower energy situation. This translation does not affect the perfect Σ=1 coincidence site relationship. Such a lattice translation is expected for all high-angle grain boundaries as a way of relaxation of the boundary structure.


Author(s):  
Y. Taniguchi ◽  
E. Nakazawa ◽  
S. Taya

Imaging energy filters can add new information to electron microscopic images with respect to energy-axis, so-called electron spectroscopic imaging (ESI). Recently, many good results have been reported using this imaging technique. ESI also allows high-contrast observation of unstained biological samples, becoming a trend of the field of morphology. We manufactured a new type of energy filter as a trial production. This energy filter consists of two magnets, and we call γ-filter since the trajectory of electrons shows ‘γ’-shape inside the filter. We evaluated the new energyγ-filter TEM with the γ-filter.Figure 1 shows schematic view of the electron optics of the γ-type energy filter. For the determination of the electron-optics of the γ-type energy filter, we used the TRIO (Third Order Ion Optics) program which has been developed for the design of high resolution mass spectrometers. The TRIO takes the extended fringing fields (EFF) into consideration. EFF makes it difficult to design magnetic energy filters with magnetic sector fields.


Author(s):  
Weiping Liu ◽  
Jennifer Fung ◽  
W.J. de Ruijter ◽  
Hans Chen ◽  
John W. Sedat ◽  
...  

Electron tomography is a technique where many projections of an object are collected from the transmission electron microscope (TEM), and are then used to reconstruct the object in its entirety, allowing internal structure to be viewed. As vital as is the 3-D structural information and with no other 3-D imaging technique to compete in its resolution range, electron tomography of amorphous structures has been exercised only sporadically over the last ten years. Its general lack of popularity can be attributed to the tediousness of the entire process starting from the data collection, image processing for reconstruction, and extending to the 3-D image analysis. We have been investing effort to automate all aspects of electron tomography. Our systems of data collection and tomographic image processing will be briefly described.To date, we have developed a second generation automated data collection system based on an SGI workstation (Fig. 1) (The previous version used a micro VAX). The computer takes full control of the microscope operations with its graphical menu driven environment. This is made possible by the direct digital recording of images using the CCD camera.


Author(s):  
B. Roy Frieden

Despite the skill and determination of electro-optical system designers, the images acquired using their best designs often suffer from blur and noise. The aim of an “image enhancer” such as myself is to improve these poor images, usually by digital means, such that they better resemble the true, “optical object,” input to the system. This problem is notoriously “ill-posed,” i.e. any direct approach at inversion of the image data suffers strongly from the presence of even a small amount of noise in the data. In fact, the fluctuations engendered in neighboring output values tend to be strongly negative-correlated, so that the output spatially oscillates up and down, with large amplitude, about the true object. What can be done about this situation? As we shall see, various concepts taken from statistical communication theory have proven to be of real use in attacking this problem. We offer below a brief summary of these concepts.


Author(s):  
Stuart McKernan

For many years the concept of quantitative diffraction contrast experiments might have consisted of the determination of dislocation Burgers vectors using a g.b = 0 criterion from several different 2-beam images. Since the advent of the personal computer revolution, the available computing power for performing image-processing and image-simulation calculations is enormous and ubiquitous. Several programs now exist to perform simulations of diffraction contrast images using various approximations. The most common approximations are the use of only 2-beams or a single systematic row to calculate the image contrast, or calculating the image using a column approximation. The increasing amount of literature showing comparisons of experimental and simulated images shows that it is possible to obtain very close agreement between the two images; although the choice of parameters used, and the assumptions made, in performing the calculation must be properly dealt with. The simulation of the images of defects in materials has, in many cases, therefore become a tractable problem.


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