Electron microscopy: advanced methods

MSE-450

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Course summary

This lecture will be largely held as an inverted classroom for 8 weeks out of the 14 weeks. For the inverted classes, students are asked to follow the corresponding week on the online course. The Wednesday session will be held in person on campus. It will be devoted to Q&A, discussions and quizzes on the course as well as in-person demonstration/hands on demos at the TEM.

From our experience, this has proven to be an effective teaching format.

Course evaluation will be project-based evaluation with one individual report + oral evaluation during the exam period. The project will be written, where you write a short report on the TEM techniques used for acquiring images and data in a published scientific article. The grade will be 50% written report 50% oral exam.

Reports are to be sent to duncan.alexander@epfl.ch. The deadline for submission of the reports is: Monday 9 June.

The oral exams will take place on Monday 16 June in DIA 003.

Exam schedule:
Schedule for oral exams 2025

Useful links:

Week 0:

Introduction, presentation of the team and of the course.

Reminders on crystallography: conventional lecture & in-class exercises.

First look at geometrical optics.

Visit of the microscopes.

Additional material:

Week 1

Before the course: Follow week one of the lecture on Coursera
If the video link for the Tonomura double-slit interference pattern experiment is broken, you can use this link.

Class-time course: Q&A, discussion

Demos at the TEM: simple mode of operation. Imaging mode and diffraction mode.

Additional material:

Week 2

Introduction II: operating modes of the microscope

Follow Week 2 of the MOOCS on Coursera

At the TEMs: Imaging and diffraction; "true" bright field; displaced aperture dark field; defocused diffraction pattern.

Additional material:

Week 3

Diffraction and imaging I

Follow week three of the online lectures

At the microscopes: 2-axis tilting of (001) Si single crystal sample to 2-beam condition in selected area diffraction mode.

Additional material:

Week 4

Diffraction and imaging II

Follow week four of the online lectures

Mini-lecture: centered-aperture dark-field imaging

At the microscopes: 2-axis tilting of metallographic sample. Displaced and centered-aperture dark-field.

Additional material:

Week 5

Diffraction and imaging III

Follow week five of the online lectures: dynamical scattering

Install on your laptop and check it works before the course begins on Wednesday.

Additional material:

Week 6

Diffraction and imaging IV

Follow week six of the online lectures

At the microscope: Convergent beam electron diffraction demo on Si [0 0 1] sample.

Additional material:

Week 7

Diffraction and imaging V

Conventional lecture (no online lectures):
– Kikuchi line formation
– Diffraction contrast imaging
– Defect analysis (dislocation imaging)
– 2D defects in TEM

At the microscope: strong beam and weak beam imaging of dislocations in GaN films

In the classroom: analysis of example TEM data for report

Additional material:

Week 8

Phase Contrast imaging part I

Flipped format. Follow Week 7 of online lectures before the class.

At the microscope: fast Fourier transform of amorphous carbon in function of defocus, astigmatism, objective aperture

Easter break

Week 9

Phase Contrast imaging part II. Crystalline specimen

Flipped format format. Follow week 8 of online lectures before the class.



Week 10

STEM part I

Classical lecture + demos

Demos at the microscope:

  • Regular STEM on materials science samples – Talos and Osiris


Additional material:

Week 11

STEM part II

Classical lecture +  demos

Demos at the microscope: focus and astigmatism on the "electron Ronchigram" + HAADF imaging of research nanoparticles; Cs-STEM HAADF imaging of research perovskite oxide sample.

Additional material:

Week 12.

Analytical TEM part I. Classical lectures + demo.

Demo at the microscope: STEM-EDXS mapping

Additional material:

Week 13.

Analytical TEM part II: EELS. Classical lectures + demo.

Demo at the Titan Themis: EELS on boron nitride and graphite flakes

Additional material. Inelastic scattering formalism only for those who are interested.