A New Method for the Measurement of Thickness in Single Crystals

A new method for thickness determination of single-crystal thin samples at exact zone axis orientation, based on pattern recognition in convergent beam electron diffraction (CBED), is presented. The method is especially well suited to materials with a large unit cell in zone axis directions where the reciprocal lattice is uniformly dense with diffraction points. The new method is based on comparison of a measured CBED zone axis pattern with a set of calculated ones. Its accuracy was estimated to be around 10% in the 5–100 nm thickness range as checked for garnets at the [111] zone orientation.     

X-Ray emission modulation by electron channelling and site occupancy in garnets

Axial channelling effects in a pyrope garnet for three zone axis orientations: [111], [211], and [311] have been investigated. The variations of the characteristic X-ray emission under the [111] zone axis diffracting conditions was correlated with dynamical n-beam calculations. Site occupancies determinations obtained by comparing X + Z and Y sites have been made using ALCHEMI techniques.     

Sites are Separable in Garnets with ALCHEMI

 It is shown in this paper that – in contrast to the accepted belief in the literature – it is possible to determine if a minority component is located on the dodecahedral, octahedral or tetrahedral sites in a garnet single crystal. Previous literature regarded the dodecahedral sites indistinguishable form the tetrahedral sites. Our prediction about the separability is based upon dynamical Bloch-wave calculations and proved experimentally in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) on two different natural garnets (almandine and grossular). The crystallographic positions of the minority components are determined in an ALCHEMI experiment that makes use of the channeling of electrons in special directions of a single-crystal sample.