Radial distribution function imaging by STEM diffraction: Phase mapping and analysis of heterogeneous nanostructured glasses

Characterizing heterogeneous nanostructured amorphous materials is a challenging topic, because of difficulty to solve disordered atomic arrangement in nanometer scale. We developed a new transmission electron microscopy (TEM) method to enable phase analysis and mapping of heterogeneous amorphous structures. That is to combine scanning TEM (STEM) diffraction mapping, radial distribution function (RDF) analysis, and hyperspectral analysis. This method was applied to an amorphous zirconium oxide and zirconium iron multilayer system, and showed extreme sensitivity to small atomic packing variations. This approach helps to understand local structure variations in glassy composite materials and provides new insights to correlate structure and properties of glasses.