ON THE EXTRACTION OF HIGH-QUALITY DATA FROM REAL-TIME TRANSMISSION ELECTRON-MICROSCOPY EXPERIMENTS

We describe the analysis of the results of three real-time high resolu tion, controlled-environment transmission electron microscopy (CETEM) experiments. We concentrate on the analysis methods used and demonstra te that appropriate computer processing techniques allow the very larg e amounts of data produced by real-time experiments to be reduced effi ciently to quantitative results. The methods used identify the particu lar aspects of the data which make the result qualitatively obvious, t hen assemble carefully selected sets of processing steps to enhance th e required forms within the data, while suppressing those aspects whic h are intuitively ignored when examining the data by eye but prevent a direct computerised analysis. Three examples, of different analyses, are given with an explanation of the procedure adopted, firstly the tr acking of particle motion and growth in a 5% Pt/Al2O3 catalyst by cros s correlation of filtered images; secondly the monitoring of the falli ng oxygen content during deoxygenation of an YBa2Cu3O7-delta/MgO thin film by measurement of the change in moire fringe spacings using a fil tering and contouring procedure and finally the measurement of the rat es of oxygen and antimony loss on strong reduction of FeSbO4 by a fitt ing procedure of EELS spectra.