Aberration-corrected precession electron diffraction

Precession electron diffraction (PED) is a promising technique for collecting high quality diffraction patterns for rapid nanoscale structural characterization [1]. It is able to reduce dynamical scattering effects, improving the interpretability of diffraction intensities over those obtained by conventional electron diffraction techniques. When used on a microscope that can produce a fine probe, the method simplifies symmetry identification and enables more straightforward phase recovery (using statistical inversion techniques) for small phases on the order of tens of nanometers. Several studies have reported remarkable improvements to dataset quality: R-factors of just above 10% have been reported for fairly thick metal oxide phases solved using PED data, as compared to 20%-40% typical for conventional selected area patterns (for reference, typical synchrotron X-ray R-factors are under 10%) [2-6].