Methods and devices for high throughput crystal structure analysis by electron diffraction

A method for electron diffraction tomography of a crystal sample, comprising:

• a) providing a sample comprising a plurality of said crystals in random orientations;
• b) obtaining an electron diffraction, ED pattern from each of a plurality of discrete locations within an area of the sample, wherein an electron beam used to obtain the ED patterns is scanned across the sample, in combination with a beam scanning protocol as the beam converges at every discrete location of the sample;
• c) determining different crystal orientations in the sample using template matching applied to the individual ED patterns obtained in b);
• d) determining, from relative thickness maps obtained as virtual bright field, STEM bright field, HAADF or zero loss EELS thickness maps, the relative crystal thicknesses at the discrete locations wherein the ED pattern were obtained;
• e) determining a common intensity scaling factor from the relative thickness determined in d), and normalizing the intensities of individual ED patterns from discrete locations;
• and
• f) calculating the atomic crystal structure of the randomly oriented crystals from the three dimensional set of normalized ED patterns and orientation information.