Wang Zechao, Tavabi Amir H, Jin Lei, Rusz Ján, Tyutyunnikov Dmitry, Jiang Hanbo, Moritomo Yutaka, Mayer Joachim, Dunin-Borkowski Rafal E, Yu Rong, Zhu Jing, Zhong Xiaoyan
National Center for Electron Microscopy in Beijing, Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials (MOE), The State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany.
Nat Mater. 2018 Mar;17(3):221-225. doi: 10.1038/s41563-017-0010-4. Epub 2018 Feb 5.
In order to obtain a fundamental understanding of the interplay between charge, spin, orbital and lattice degrees of freedom in magnetic materials and to predict and control their physical properties, experimental techniques are required that are capable of accessing local magnetic information with atomic-scale spatial resolution. Here, we show that a combination of electron energy-loss magnetic chiral dichroism and chromatic-aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy, which reduces the focal spread of inelastically scattered electrons by orders of magnitude when compared with the use of spherical aberration correction alone, can achieve atomic-scale imaging of magnetic circular dichroism and provide element-selective orbital and spin magnetic moments atomic plane by atomic plane. This unique capability, which we demonstrate for SrFeMoO, opens the door to local atomic-level studies of spin configurations in a multitude of materials that exhibit different types of magnetic coupling, thereby contributing to a detailed understanding of the physical origins of magnetic properties of materials at the highest spatial resolution.
为了从根本上理解磁性材料中电荷、自旋、轨道和晶格自由度之间的相互作用，并预测和控制其物理性质，需要能够以原子尺度空间分辨率获取局部磁信息的实验技术。在此，我们表明，电子能量损失磁圆二色性与色差校正透射电子显微镜相结合，与仅使用球差校正相比，可将非弹性散射电子的焦散扩展降低几个数量级，能够实现磁圆二色性的原子尺度成像，并逐原子平面提供元素选择性的轨道和自旋磁矩。我们在SrFeMoO中展示的这种独特能力，为研究众多呈现不同类型磁耦合的材料中的自旋构型的局部原子级研究打开了大门，从而有助于在最高空间分辨率下详细理解材料磁性的物理起源。
