Recent developments in transmission electron microscopy for crystallographic characterization of strained semiconductor heterostructures

With recent electronic devices relying on sub-nanometer features, the understanding of device performance requires a direct probe of the atomic arrangement. As an ideal tool for crystallographic analysis at the nanoscale, aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (ACTEM) has the ability to provide atomically resolved images and core-loss spectra. Herein, the techniques for crystallographic structure analysis based on ACTEM are reviewed and discussed, particularly ACTEM techniques for measuring strain, dislocations, phase transition, and lattice in-plane misorientation. In situ observations of crystal evolution during the application of external forces or electrical fields are also introduced, so a correlation between crystal quality and device performance can be obtained.