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Sectioning of Individual Hematite Pseudocubes with Focused Ion Beam Enables Quantitative Structural Characterization at Nanometer Length Scales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2014

Emily Asenath-Smith  and
Lara A. Estroff
Emily Asenath-Smith
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, 214 Bard Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Lara A. Estroff*
Affiliation:
Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, 214 Bard Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
*
*Corresponding author. [email protected]
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Abstract

A dual-beam focused ion beam microscope equipped with a nanomanipulator was used to fabricate slices from within individual hematite (α-Fe2O3) pseudocubes with selected orientations with respect to the original pseudocubes. Transmission electron microanalysis through selected area electron diffraction enabled assignment of each thin section to a particular zone of the hematite lattice. While the pseudocubes are composed of numerous crystallites, 25–50 nm in size, they are not simply polycrystalline particles. Electron diffraction of thin sections showed that while the pseudocubic hematite particles are composed of numerous coherent domains, the individual thin sections display a net crystallographic orientation to the underlying hematite lattice. Quantitative analysis of the lattice misorientation between coherent domains was calculated from the azimuthal spread of electron diffraction peaks and is consistent with a structure that contains small-angle grain boundaries. Based upon this analysis, we conclude that the pseudocubic hematite particles are mosaic crystals, composed of highly oriented coherent domains.

Keywords

iron oxidecrystalmosaicitytransmission electron microscopyselected area electron diffraction
Type
Materials Applications
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 635 - 644
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2014 

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