Determination of the point resolution of high-resolution transmission electron microscope using the through-focus technique

Kurio Fukushima; Yoshifumi Taniguchi; Mitsuhide Matsushita; Masaaki Sugiyama; Kenji Kaneko

doi:10.1016/j.micron.2024.103639

Determination of the point resolution of high-resolution transmission electron microscope using the through-focus technique

Micron. 2024 Jul:182:103639. doi: 10.1016/j.micron.2024.103639. Epub 2024 Apr 17.

Authors

Kurio Fukushima¹, Yoshifumi Taniguchi², Mitsuhide Matsushita³, Masaaki Sugiyama⁴, Kenji Kaneko⁵

Affiliations

¹ STEM Corporation, Tokyo 194-0215, Japan.
² Core Technology & Solutions Business Group, Hitachi High-Tech Corporation, Ibaragi 312-8504, Japan.
³ EP Business Unit, JEOL Ltd., Tokyo 196-8558, Japan.
⁴ Research Center for Ultra-High Voltage Electron Microscopy, Osaka Univ., Osaka 567-0047, Japan.
⁵ Department of Materials, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu Univ., Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan. Electronic address: kaneko.kenji.513@m.kyushu-u.ac.jp.

PMID: 38688141
DOI: 10.1016/j.micron.2024.103639

Abstract

From the viewpoint of evaluating the instrumental performance of high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM), the Scherzer condition was investigated using information theory. As a result, the optimum defocus amount Δf can be expressed based on [Formula: see text] , and the formula [Formula: see text] is obtained. Furthermore, a procedure for measuring point resolution using the through-focus technique is developed, and a new method for determining the spherical aberration coefficient using the variance of Δf is introduced in the procedure.

Keywords: High-resolution TEM; Information theory; Phase contrast; Point resolution; Scherzer resolution; Spherical aberration coefficient.