On the peculiarities of CBED pattern formation revealed by multislice simulation.

A modified multislice method has been developed for calculations of Convergent Beam Electron Diffraction (CBED) patterns. The validity of the method for HOLZ- and Kikuchi-line calculations has been proofed by comparison to Bloch-wave calculations. The application of the method leads to the new understanding of CBED patterns formation. Dynamical scattering of weak HOLZ reflections plays the key role in the appearance of deficient lines in the central CBED disk. Different HOLZ lines do have significantly different and extended scattering areas; the central 000 CBED disk, consequently, contains structural information from an area around the primary beam which is determined by the Bragg angle of HOLZ reflections and the thickness of the sample. A variation of lattice parameters, if present within this area, results in artificial symmetry violations of the pattern and in changes of line profiles.