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Alpha-Null Defocus: an Optimum Defocus Condition with Relevance for Focal-Series Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

Michael A. O’Keefe*
Affiliation:
National Center for Electron Microscopy, LBNL B72, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
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Abstract

Two optimum defocus conditions are well known to users of high-resolution transmission electron microscopes. Scherzer defocus is useful in high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) because it produces an image of the specimen “projected potential” to the resolution of the microscope. Lichte defocus is useful in electron holography because it optimizes sampling in frequency-space by minimizing the slope of the microscope objective lens phase change out to the highest spatial frequency in the hologram, consequently minimizing dispersion. For focal-series reconstruction, the requirement to maximize transfer into the image of high-frequency diffracted beam amplitudes leads to a third optimum defocus condition.

Image reconstruction methods allow the achievement of super-resolution - resolution beyond the native (Scherzer) resolution of the microscope - by correction of the phase changes introduced by the microscope objective lens. One such method is focal-series reconstruction, in which diffracted-beam information obtained at several different focus values is combined. to produce a valid super-resolution result, it is necessary to ensure that every spatial frequency is represented appropriately. Suitable choice of an optimum defocus produces optimum transfer of diffracted-beam amplitudes at any chosen spatial frequency.

Type
TEM Instrument Development (Organized by D. Smith and L. Allard)
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2001

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