Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States.
The NUANCE Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, United States.
Nano Lett. 2022 May 25;22(10):4137-4144. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c00893. Epub 2022 May 6.
Nanoscale tailoring of catalytic materials and Li-battery alternatives has elevated the importance of gas-phase electron microscopy. Such advanced techniques are often performed using an environmental cell inserted into a conventional S/TEM setup, as this method facilitates concurrent electrochemical and temperature stimulations in a convenient and cost-effective manner. However, these cells are made by encapsulating gas between two insulating membranes, which introduces additional electron scattering. We have evaluated strengths and limitations of the gas-phase E-cell S/TEM technique, both experimentally and through simulations, across a variety of practical parameters. We reveal the degradation of image quality in an E-cell setup from various components and explore opportunities to improve imaging quality through intelligent choice of experimental parameters. Our results underscore the benefits of using an E-cell STEM technique, due to its versatility and excellent ability to suppress the exotic contributions from the membrane device.
纳米级的催化材料和锂电池替代品的设计，提高了气相电子显微镜的重要性。这种先进的技术通常使用插入到传统 S/TEM 设置中的环境电池来进行，因为这种方法以方便且具有成本效益的方式促进了电化学和温度刺激的同时进行。然而，这些电池是通过在两个绝缘膜之间封装气体来制造的，这会引入额外的电子散射。我们通过实验和模拟评估了各种实际参数下气相 E 细胞 S/TEM 技术的优缺点。我们揭示了不同组件的 E 细胞设置中图像质量的退化，并通过明智地选择实验参数来探索提高成像质量的机会。我们的结果强调了使用 E 细胞 STEM 技术的好处，因为它具有多功能性和出色的抑制膜器件奇异贡献的能力。
