Wang Xingzhi, Li Jie, Ha Hyun Dong, Dahl Jakob C, Ondry Justin C, Moreno-Hernandez Ivan, Head-Gordon Teresa, Alivisatos A Paul
Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
JACS Au. 2021 Mar 22;1(3):316-327. doi: 10.1021/jacsau.0c00030. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
The synthesis quality of artificial inorganic nanocrystals is most often assessed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) for which high-throughput advances have dramatically increased both the quantity and information richness of metal nanoparticle (mNP) characterization. Existing automated data analysis algorithms of TEM mNP images generally adopt a supervised approach, requiring a significant effort in human preparation of labeled data that reduces objectivity, efficiency, and generalizability. We have developed an unsupervised algorithm AutoDetect-mNP for automated analysis of TEM images that objectively extracts morphological information on convex mNPs from TEM images based on their shape attributes, requiring little to no human input in the process. The performance of AutoDetect-mNP is tested on two data sets of bright field TEM images of Au nanoparticles with different shapes and further extended to palladium nanocubes and cadmium selenide quantum dots, demonstrating that the algorithm is quantitatively reliable and can thus serve as a generalizable measure of the morphology distributions of any mNP synthesis. The AutoDetect-mNP algorithm will aid in future developments of high-throughput characterization of mNPs and the future advent of time-resolved TEM studies that can investigate reaction mechanisms of mNP synthesis and reactivity.
人工无机纳米晶体的合成质量通常通过透射电子显微镜(TEM)进行评估,高通量技术的进步极大地增加了金属纳米颗粒(mNP)表征的数量和信息丰富度。现有的TEM mNP图像自动数据分析算法通常采用监督方法,需要人工大量准备标记数据,这降低了客观性、效率和通用性。我们开发了一种无监督算法AutoDetect-mNP,用于TEM图像的自动分析,该算法基于凸形mNP的形状属性从TEM图像中客观地提取形态信息,在此过程中几乎不需要人工输入。AutoDetect-mNP的性能在两组不同形状的金纳米颗粒明场TEM图像数据集上进行了测试,并进一步扩展到钯纳米立方体和硒化镉量子点,表明该算法在定量方面是可靠的,因此可以作为任何mNP合成形态分布的通用度量。AutoDetect-mNP算法将有助于mNP高通量表征的未来发展以及时间分辨TEM研究的未来出现,后者可以研究mNP合成和反应性的反应机制。