In-situ Precession-Assisted 4D-STEM for Chemomechanical Studies of Materials in Gas Environments

In this DENSsolutions Climate webinar, we welcome Dr. Yang Yang from the Penn State University in USA.

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Abstract

Understanding how materials deform, react, and ultimately fail in real operating environments is fundamental to designing next-generation structural and energy materials. However, capturing nanometer-scale strain and orientation evolution at nanometer spatial resolution during chemical reactions has been challenging due to trade-offs in field-of-view, spatial resolution, sample drift/deformation, electron dose, and environmental constraints in transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

In our upcoming Climate webinar, Dr. Yang Yang, Assistant Professor at Penn State University, will explore a workflow for in-situ precession-assisted four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D-STEM) that enables quantitative strain and orientation mapping inside a gas-cell TEM, even under elevated temperature and controlled gas atmospheres.

The presentation will discuss experiments that integrate precession electron diffraction (PED), direct electron detectors, and MEMS-based closed-cell environmental TEM, along with optimized sample-preparation strategies and reaction-pausing protocols. Using pure metal oxidation as a model system relevant to nuclear energy applications, the study directly probes the nanometer-scale tensile-strain localization at the metal–oxide interface and the evolving crystal orientation during early-stage oxidation.

These observations provide insights into how chemo-mechanical coupling impacts microstructural evolution, and ultimately the durability of materials exposed to reactive environments.

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