Dr. Chang Lu, Application Specialist, Gatan & EDAX

In early 2022, Gatan and EDAX completed the integration, and our new division was named Electron Microscope Technology (EMT). As an EMT application scientist on the China applications team, I am responsible for almost all the Gatan and EDAX products for Northern China, on both Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) platforms. Therefore, I work with diversified products and diversified user groups that focus on different subject matters. In the first half of this year, I found that the data analysis software from EMT Gatan’s DigitalMicrograph® (DM) and EDAX’s OIM Analysis™ are not completely isolated, but in many cases, they can cooperate with each other to help our customers.

For instance, DM can do a series of electron microscopy-related data processing. For some energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) mapping data from the minor content, there are various methods to achieve smoothing and enhance the contrast. While in the MSA panel, the principal component analysis (PCA) function can be helpful in terms of high-resolution EDS mapping. However, in today’s EDAX blog, I will talk a little bit more about one feature in OIM Analysis that could potentially benefit a lot of Gatan camera users.

In northern China, there are a group of Gatan users who are focused on nanoscale phases and grains in the TEM. In most scenarios, they heavily employ electron diffraction or bright field imaging to make judgments. However, it is really difficult to determine the unknown (unidentified but has a known x-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern and chemical composition, so there is a potential for it) phase by simply relying on the minor changes of grayscale bright field images. You may say diffraction could help. Yes, a clean, beautiful diffractogram of a particular crystal direction can be helpful. But, no, you need to find the zone axis carefully. If this unknown phase has a crystal structure of low symmetry, most of the time, the effort will be in vain. Generally speaking, the Difpack tool in the DM software could help in determining d-spacing and angles, however, it is not intuitive enough to know the sample at first sight.

The solution is pattern simulation with OIM Matrix™. At first, I noticed this feature because it helped an EDAX user who was studying strains. It can easily export a theoretical Kikuchi pattern for a specific sample orientation with zero stress. Then one day, I had a sudden thought during my morning shower. Maybe I can change the acceleration voltage to 200 kV (typical for TEM), and the sample tilt angle to 0° (make it flat). After entering a specific orientation, we can get a Kikuchi pattern under TEM conditions! For example, take the simulated pattern from NdCeB. With Kinematic Color Overlay, we can also find out what crystal plane corresponds to a specific Kikuchi line. Now, when we start changing the zone axis in an unidentified sample, we can first simulate several orientations and compare them with what we see under TEM. In this way, the process of finding the Kikuchi pole turns out to be very convenient.

Now, when some Gatan users bring in some “weird” unidentified samples and say they want to find various zone axis for doing diffractions. I don’t worry about it. I think from a problem-solving point of view, the powerful software from both Gatan and EDAX, like the integration of two companies, can also be combined to solve complex and difficult problems for our customers in the future.