A Method to Characterize and Correct Elliptical Distortion in Electron Diffraction Patterns

Abstract

One of the main obstacles to performing electron crystallography analysis in a TEM is that the acquired electron diffraction data often exhibits some form of distortion introduced by the lens system. Recognizing this problem, Capitani et al. has proposed a method to detect such distortion, which is primarily elliptical, by using a single crystal standard. Once such elliptical distortion is characterized, electron diffraction data acquired later can then be corrected by means of image processing. However, it may be desirable to correct such distortion at the instrument level. In this article, a different approach to measuring diffraction elliptical distortion is proposed by characterizing diffraction ring patterns and it is demonstrated that by varying the objective lens stigmation settings, it is possible to eliminate this elliptical distortion completely.