Electron ptychography reveals correlated lattice vibrations at atomic resolution.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 42270641.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-74135-4 and PMC identifier 13254316.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Electron Ptychography is a computational imaging technique capable of performing phase retrieval at atomic resolution. Here we introduce the CAVIAR framework (Correlated Atomic Vibration Imaging with sub-Angstrom Resolution) that reveals spatial correlations in atomic displacements at the atomic scale. Using realistically simulated data for a symmetric Σ9 grain boundary in silicon and experimental data of a hexagonal boron nitride bicrystal, we observe correlations between atomic movements in the range of 10-20 pm at room temperature in agreement with our expectation. From only the atomic masses and temperature as input, we obtain frequencies of the longitudinal and transverse acoustic and optic phonons from just a few nm<sup>3</sup> volume, in agreement with inelastic neutron scattering. This ability to spatially resolve correlated atomic motion distinguishes CAVIAR and positions it as a complementary tool to vibrational electron energy loss spectroscopy for exploring atom dynamics at the finest scale.