Electron Beam Manipulation and Interaction Reconstruction for High-Resolution Electron Microscopy

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Electron microscopes provide atomic resolution images of a vast range of materials and are used intensively to drive innovations and understanding in the sciences and technologies that help address major challenges faced by society. The most common type of electron microscope scans a focused electron beam over a sample and records indicators of the beam - sample interaction to construct images. Surprisingly though, these microscopes currently disregard or are unable to access vast amounts of information on how the beam interacts with the sample. To address this, new microscope detector technologies have recently been developed, which along with advances in beam shaping and timing techniques, permit access to vastly increased information upon the beam - sample interaction. I was the first Canadian researcher to successfully use one of these new generation detectors in combination with advanced interaction reconstruction algorithms and a high-speed acquisition system I developed, to produce unprecedented atomic resolution images. The techniques and technologies in this new system present a new paradigm for electron microscopy that I will advance in my research program. Advances will be made that are required to provide these new levels of resolution and additional information from biological and soft materials, which are easily damaged by the electron beam, along with physically hard materials. This will be performed through a combination of researching and developing improvements to the reconstruction algorithms, shaping or manipulating the beam both spatially and temporally, and exploring the fundamental interactions that lead to sample degradation in the electron beam. The developed new techniques, and the fundamental insights given to materials they are applied to in this program, will strongly impact the characterization, development and understanding of biological materials, energy storage devices, medical therapeutic and diagnostic materials, and advanced computing devices, for example. Furthermore, highly qualified personnel will be trained within this program who will be at the forefront of electron microscopy and have broad skills transferable across science, engineering and technology lead industries, particularly where there is a need for advanced numerical data analysis and processing.