Prospects for Detecting Single Vacancies by Quantitative Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning TEM (STEM) have made significant advances in direct imaging of point defects, including substitutional impurities, interstitial impurities, and selfinterstitials. However, imaging defects that decrease, rather than increase local intensity, such as vacancies, remains a significant challenge. Here we show in simulations that recent advances in highly quantitative, picometer-precision STEM imaging [1] may make it possible to detect single cation vacancies in a complex oxide both through the reduction of the column intensity and the small shifts in the neighboring atomic column positions.