Phase Identification by Selected Area Electron Diffraction

Selected area electron diffraction (SAED) is an extremely useful technique for obtaining structural information from materials examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM).The structural information derived from electron diffraction patterns in combination with chemical information from energy dispersive spectroscopy or electron energy loss spectroscopy helps in identification of phases.Despite the usefulness of SAED, there are limitations especially in comparison with the more fully developed technique of x-ray diffraction.For instance, SAED information is commonly limited to one orientation.D-spacings are extracted and compared to the d-spacings in a structural database.Structural information obtained from one orientation, however, does not necessarily uniquely identify a phase, or find related phases, and therefore ambiguities in identification commonly arise even with associated chemical information.In this work, consideration is given to an alternative approach to phase identification by SAED.