Nanocrystal size distribution analysis from transmission electron microscopy images

Journal article (2015)

Authors

M. van Sebille Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS
L.J.P. van der Maaten Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics - EEMCS
Lijing Xie Uppsala University
K. Jarolímek Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS
R. Santbergen Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS
R.A.C.M.M. van Swaaij Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS
Klaus Leifer Uppsala University
M. Zeman Photovoltaic Materials and Devices - EEMCS
Research Group
Photovoltaic Materials and Devices (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
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Published Date

2015

Language

English

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Department

Electrical Sustainable Energy

Research Group

Photovoltaic Materials and Devices

Abstract

We propose a method, with minimal bias caused by user input, to quickly detect and measure the nanocrystal size distribution from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images using a combination of Laplacian of Gaussian filters and non-maximum suppression. We demonstrate the proposed method on bright-field TEM images of an a-SiC:H sample containing embedded silicon nanocrystals with varying magnifications and we compare the accuracy and speed with size distributions obtained by manual measurements, a thresholding method and PEBBLES. Finally, we analytically consider the error induced by slicing nanocrystals during TEM sample preparation on the measured nanocrystal size distribution and formulate an equation to correct this effect.