Making sense of nanocrystal lattice fringes

The orientation dependence of thin-crystal lattice fringes can be gracefully quantified using fringe-visibility maps, a direct-space analog of Kikuchi maps [Nishikawa and Kikuchi, Nature (London) 121, 1019 (1928)]. As in navigation of reciprocal space with the aid of Kikuchi lines, fringe-visibility maps facilitate acquisition of crystallographic information from lattice images. In particular, these maps can help researchers to determine the three-dimensional lattice of individual nanocrystals, to “fringe-fingerprint” collections of randomly oriented particles, and to measure local specimen thickness with only a modest tilt. Since the number of fringes in an image increases with maximum spatial-frequency squared, these strategies (with help from more precise goniometers) will be more useful as aberration correction moves resolutions into the subangstrom range.