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Characterization of grain structure in nanocrystalline gadolinium by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Martin Seyring ,
Xiaoyan Song ,
Andrey Chuvilin ,
Ute Kaiser  and
Markus Rettenmayr
Martin Seyring*
Affiliation:
Institute of Materials Science and Technology, Friedrich Schiller University, D-07747 Jena, Germany
Xiaoyan Song
Affiliation:
College of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100022, People's Republic of China
Ute Kaiser
Affiliation:
Electron Microscopy Group of Materials Science, University of Ulm, D-89081 Ulm, Germany
Markus Rettenmayr
Affiliation:
Institute of Materials Science and Technology, Friedrich Schiller University, D-07747 Jena, Germany
*
a) Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: martin.seyring@uni-jena.de
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Abstract

A method is presented for recognition of nanograins in high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) images of nanocrystalline materials. We suggest a numerical procedure, which is similar to the experimental dynamic hollow cone dark-field method in transmission electron microscopy and the annular dark-field method in scanning transmission electron microscopy. The numerical routine is based on moving a small mask along a circular path in the Fourier spectrum of a HRTEM image and performing at each angular step an inverse Fourier transform. The procedure extracts the amplitude from the Fourier reconstructions and generates a sum picture that is a real space map of the local amplitude. From this map, it is possible to determine both the size and shape of the nanograins that satisfy the selected Bragg conditions. The possibilities of the method are demonstrated by determining the grain size distribution in gadolinium with ultrafine nanocrystalline grains generated by spark plasma sintering.

Keywords

Grain sizeNanostructureTransmission electron microscopy (TEM)
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Materials Research , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , February 2009 , pp. 342 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2009

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References

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