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Identifying Hexagonal Boron Nitride Monolayers by Transmission Electron Microscopy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

Michael L. Odlyzko  and
K. Andre Mkhoyan
Michael L. Odlyzko
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
K. Andre Mkhoyan*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: mkhoyan@umn.edu
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Abstract

Multislice simulations in the transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to examine changes in annular-dark-field scanning TEM (ADF-STEM) images, conventional bright-field TEM (BF-CTEM) images, and selected-area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns as atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) samples are tilted up to 500 mrad off of the [0001] zone axis. For monolayer h-BN the contrast of ADF-STEM images and SAED patterns does not change with tilt in this range, while the contrast of BF-CTEM images does change; h-BN multilayer contrast varies strongly with tilt for ADF-STEM imaging, BF-CTEM imaging, and SAED. These results indicate that tilt series analysis in ADF-STEM image mode or SAED mode should permit identification of h-BN monolayers from raw TEM data as well as from quantitative post-processing.

Keywords

STEMADFBNdiffractiontiltmultislice
Type
Materials Applications
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , June 2012 , pp. 558 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2012

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