Response to the comment by C. Kisielowski, H.A. Calderon, F.R. Chen, S. Helveg, J.R. Jinschek, P. Specht, D. Van Dyck on the article "On the influence of the electron dose-rate on the HRTEM image contrast" by J. Barthel, M. Lentzen, A. Thust, Ultramicroscopy 176 (2017) 37-45.

In a recent article [1] we examined the influence of the applied electron dose rate on the magnitude of the image contrast in high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). We concluded that the magnitude of the image contrast is not substantially affected by the applied electron dose rate. This result is in obvious contradiction to numerous earlier publications by Kisielowski and coworkers [2-7], who commented our recent article due to this contradiction.

On the influence of the electron dose rate on the HRTEM image contrast.

We investigate a possible dependence between the applied electron dose-rate and the magnitude of the resulting image contrast in HRTEM of inorganic crystalline objects. The present study is focussed on the question whether electron irradiation can induce excessively strong atom vibrations or displacements, which in turn could significantly reduce the resulting image contrast. For this purpose, high-resolution images of MgO, Ge, and Au samples were acquired with varying dose rates using a C-corrected FEI Titan 80-300 microscope operated at 300kV accelerating voltage.

Focal-series reconstruction in low-energy electron microscopy.

In low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) we commonly encounter images which, beside amplitude contrast, also show signatures of phase contrast. The images are usually interpreted by following the evolution of the contrast during the experiment, and assigning gray levels to morphological changes. Through reconstruction of the exit wave, two aspects of LEEM can be addressed: (1) the resolution can be improved by exploiting the full information limit of the microscope and (2) electron phase shifts which contribute to the image contrast can be extracted.

Atomic-scale measurement of structure and chemistry of a single-unit-cell layer of LaAlO3 embedded in SrTiO3.

A single layer of LaAlO3 with a nominal thickness of one unit cell, which is sandwiched between a SrTiO3 substrate and a SrTiO3 capping layer, is quantitatively investigated by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. By the use of an aberration-corrected electron microscope and by employing sophisticated numerical image simulation procedures, significant progress is made in two aspects. First, the structural as well as the chemical features of the interface are determined simultaneously on an atomic scale from the same specimen area.

Atomic structure of Beta-tantalum nanocrystallites.

The structural properties of beta-phase tantalum nanocrystallites prepared by room temperature magnetron sputter deposition on amorphous carbon substrates are investigated at atomic resolution. For these purposes spherical aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy is applied in tandem with the numerical retrieval of the exit-plane wavefunction as obtained from a through-focus series of experimental micrographs. We demonstrate that recent improvements in the resolving power of electron microscopes enable the imaging of the atomic structure of beta-tantalum with column spacings of solely 0.