Invited Paper IS+NC-ThA3
In-Situ Electron Microscopy Enabled by a TEM-SPM Platform

Thursday, October 23, 2008, 2:40 pm, Room 310

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is a powerful tool for structural characterization of materials. However in-situ studies of the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of materials at a nanometer scale are still challenging. A scanning probe microscopy (SPM), including scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and nano-indentor, explores the physical and mechanical properties of materials down to a single atom level but without internal structural information. A combined TEM-SPM platform, which integrates a fully functional SPM into a TEM, takes advantage of both the SPM and the TEM capabilities and provides unprecedented opportunities to probe the structural, mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of materials in-situ down to a nanometer scale. This allows for direct correlation of the physical and mechanical properties to the atomic-scale microstructure. In this talk, I will review our recent progress in using the TEM-SPM platform to probe the electrical and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes.¹ First, individual multiwall carbon nanotubes are peeled off layer-by-layer by electric breakdown inside the TEM. This provided new insights into the transport property of nanotubes. Second, plastic deformation, such as superplasticity, kink motion, dislocation climb, and vacancy migration, was discovered in nanotubes for the first time. Emerging directions of using the TEM-SPM platform to enable in-situ thermal/thermoelectric property measurements will be discussed.

¹J.Y. Huang et al., Nature 439, 281 (2006); J.Y. Huang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 236802 (2005); 97, 075501 (2006); 98, 185501 (2007); 99, 175593 (2007); 100, 035503 (2008).