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Three-dimensional imaging of strain in a single ZnO nanorod

An Erratum to this article was published on 29 January 2010

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Abstract

Nanoscale structures can be highly strained because of confinement effects and the strong influence of their external boundaries. This results in dramatically different electronic, magnetic and optical material properties of considerable utility. Third-generation synchrotron-based coherent X-ray diffraction has emerged as a non-destructive tool for three-dimensional (3D) imaging of strain and defects in crystals that are smaller than the coherence volume, typically a few cubic micrometres, of the available beams that have sufficient flux to reveal the material’s structure1. Until now, measurements have been possible only at a single Bragg point of a given crystal because of the limited ability to maintain alignment2; it has therefore been possible to determine only one component of displacement and not the full strain tensor. Here we report key advances in our fabrication and experimental techniques, which have enabled diffraction patterns to be obtained from six Bragg reflections of the same ZnO nanocrystal for the first time. All three Cartesian components of the ion displacement field, and in turn the full nine-component strain tensor, have thereby been imaged in three dimensions.

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Figure 1: Reconstructed amplitude and phase of a single ZnO nanorod for six differing Bragg reflections.
Figure 2: Two-dimensional slices of the 3D atomic displacement field.
Figure 3: Two-dimensional slices of the six independent components of the strain tensor.
Figure 4: Strain pattern reconstructed for an extra ZnO nanorod prepared for 1 h in O2.

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Change history

  • 29 January 2010

    In the version of this Letter originally published, the Author Contributions were missing, and should have been included as: ”I.K.R and M.C.N. planned the experiments. ZnO nanorods were synthesized by S.J.L. Samples were designed and prepared by M.C.N. Experimental data was gathered by M.C.N., R.H. and I.K.R. Data analysis was carried out by I.K.R. and M.C.N. Strain-field reconstruction methods and procedures were designed and implemented by M.C.N. The manuscript was prepared by M.C.N.“ Also, in the PDF version of this Letter originally published, in the Methods section “At carrier gas” should have been “Ar carrier gas” and “Ar 900 C” should have been “At 900 C”. These have been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of this Letter.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by EPSRC Grant EP/D052939/1 and an ERC FP7 ‘advanced grant’. The experimental work was carried out at Advanced Photon Source Beamline 34-ID-C, built with funds from the US National Science Foundation under Grant DMR-9724294 and operated by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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I.K.R and M.C.N. planned the experiments. ZnO nanorods were synthesized by S.J.L. Samples were designed and prepared by M.C.N. Experimental data was gathered by M.C.N., R.H. and I.K.R. Data analysis was carried out by I.K.R. and M.C.N. Strain-field reconstruction methods and procedures were designed and implemented by M.C.N. The manuscript was prepared by M.C.N.

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Correspondence to Marcus C. Newton.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Newton, M., Leake, S., Harder, R. et al. Three-dimensional imaging of strain in a single ZnO nanorod. Nature Mater 9, 120–124 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2607

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