The formation and utility of sub-angstrom to nanometer-sized electron probes in the aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope at the University of Illinois.

We evaluate the probe forming capability of a JEOL 2200FS transmission electron microscope equipped with a spherical aberration (Cs) probe corrector. The achievement of a real space sub-Angstrom (0.1 nm) probe for scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) imaging is demonstrated by acquisition and modeling of high-angle annular dark-field STEM images. We show that by optimizing the illumination system, large probe currents and large collection angles for electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) can be combined to yield EELS fine structure data spatially resolved to the atomic scale. We demonstrate the probe forming flexibility provided by the additional lenses in the probe corrector in several ways, including the formation of nanometer-sized parallel beams for nanoarea electron diffraction, and the formation of focused probes for convergent beam electron diffraction with a range of convergence angles. The different probes that can be formed using the probe corrected STEM opens up new applications for electron microscopy and diffraction.