Electron correlation microscopy (ECM) is used to investigate atomic dynamics in metallic glasses (MG) close to metastable equilibrium. It temporally correlates diffracted intensities of a time series of dark-field images to deduce a metric for structural decays. The measurement parameters, such as time and temperature, must be chosen according to the material of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVariable resolution fluctuation electron microscopy experiments were performed on self-ion implanted amorphous silicon and amorphous germanium to analyze the medium-range order. The results highlight that the commonly used pair-persistence analysis is influenced by the experimental conditions. Precisely, the structural correlation length Λ, a metric for the medium-range order length scale in the material, obtained from this particular evaluation varies depending on whether energy filtering is used to acquire the data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectron correlation microscopy experiments were conducted on amorphous germanium (a-Ge) and amorphous silicon (a-Si) with the goal to study self-diffusion. For this purpose, a series of tilted dark-field images were acquired during in situ heating of the samples in a transmission electron microscope. These experiments show that the measurements are greatly affected by artefacts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe crystallization temperature of deeply undercooled Cu-Ge alloy melts is repeatedly measured. A statistical analysis is applied on the undercooling distributions obtained from nine different compositions, ranging from the pure semimetal (Ge) to the pure metal (Cu). By considering each undercooling distribution as an inhomogeneous Poisson process, the nucleation rates for every composition are calculated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrosc Microanal
September 2022