A Quantitative Evaluation of Electron Beam Sensitivity in Calcite Nanoparticles

We present analysis and quantification of electron beam sensitivity in calcite in order to identify damage thresholds under which bright field TEM imaging, selected area electron diffraction and scanning TEM should be performed. A large reduction in damage under TEM was found when operating at 300 kV rather than 200 kV, suggesting that the irradiation induced degradation of calcite to calcium oxide is dominated by radiolysis. At 300 kV, bright field STEM imaging was able to retain lattice information at higher fluences than was possible using TEM and, although damage was still seen to occur, there was no observation of the formation of crystalline calcium oxide.