Achievement

IGERT Trainee Paul Cueva and his colleagues developed a new technique to characterize materials with scanning transmission electron microscopy. By obtaining a coherent beam electron diffraction pattern at every point in a scan, they can perceive local material (a)symmetries such as octahedral rotations in a ferroelectric oxide or spin direction in a magnetic domain. Such characterization will aid in the development of low-power memory devices. Current results in a suboptimal configuration have already shown the ability to resolve different phases and lattice orientations. Working with Peter Ercius at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Cueva has made plans to improve the technique to be able to resolve heretofore-unseen information about materials.