Yimei
Zhu
Brookhaven National Lab
Revealing nano-scale electronic and magnetic structure with fast
electrons
This talk is part of the monthly series of joint SBU-BNL seminars
on nanoscience
A challenge in solid state physics and materials science
is to accurately measure electrostatic and magnetic potentials in crystals
and defects at nonometric scale. Facing such a challenge we developed
a novel quantitative electron diffraction/imaging technique that is very
sensitive to charge distribution in solid and can be used to test Density
Functional Theory calculations. We present our recent work on the
measurement of valence electron distribution and charge transfer in MgB2
superconductor and dielectric CaCu3Ti4O12 as well as on potential variation
and space charge at the grain boundaries of Ca-doped and -undoped YBa2Cu3O7-?
bicrystals. We also report our progress towards quantitative high-resolution
phase microscopy including electron holography and non-interferometric
phase retrieval methods to reveal magnetic structure information.
Dynamic behavior of domains and their induction distribution during magnetization
process and reversal mechanism of artificially structured Permalloy elements
and arrays will be presented. Underlying principle of the different
characterization methods and their advantage and drawback will be discussed.
The author acknowledges the contribution from the members
of the Advanced Electron Microscopy Group at BNL, L.Wu, JC.Zheng, R.Klie,
V.Volkov, M.Schofield, M. Beleggia and J.Lau. Work supported by Materials
Science Division, Basic Energy Science, DOE under contract No.DE-AC02-98CH1-886.
Host: Allen