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EELS as a Probe of Local Electronic Structure and Cohesion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

David A. Muller*
Affiliation:
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 600 Mountain Ave, Murray Hill, NJ, 07974
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Abstract

There is an intimate connection between the electronic structure of a material and its physical properties. to change one, is to change the other. Some of the most striking illustrations of this relationship can be found at grain boundaries in metals and their alloys. Here, the most important changes in cohesion can be described by changes in the local density of states (LDOS), which in turn can be measured using EELS [1]. The first demonstration that EELS could be used to connect the electronic and mechanical properties of a material was in revealing the role that boron has in restoring a bulk-like bonding to grain boundaries in Ni3Al [2,3]. Boron was known to change the fracture mode in Ni3Al from intergranular to transgranular, possibly by enhancing grain boundary cohesion.

What interested me in this project, when John Silcox first suggested it as a thesis topic, was the potential of using the EELS fine structure to measure materials properties directly.

Type
Quantitative STEM: Imaging and EELS Analysis Honoring the Contributions of John Silcox (Organized by P. Batson, C. Chen and D. Muller)
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2001

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References

references

1.Muller, D.A., Phys. Rev. B, 58,5989(1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Muller, D.A., Batson, P.E., Subramanian, S., Sass, S., Silcox, J., Mat.Res.Soc.Sym. 319, 299 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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4.Pearson, D.H., Fultz, B., Ahn, C.C., Appl. Phys. Lett. 53 1405 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Muller, D.A., Singh, D.J. and Silcox, J., Phys. Rev. B 57, 8181, (1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Muller, D.A., and Mills, M. J., Materials Science and Engineering A260 1228 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. DOE Grant DEFG02-87ER45322 supported the work covered in refs 1-3,5.Google Scholar