Orientation mapping of semicrystalline polymers using scanning electron nanobeam diffraction

Ouliana Panova; X Chelsea Chen; Karen C Bustillo; Colin Ophus; Mahesh P Bhatt; Nitash Balsara; Andrew M Minor

doi:10.1016/j.micron.2016.05.008

Orientation mapping of semicrystalline polymers using scanning electron nanobeam diffraction

Micron. 2016 Sep:88:30-6. doi: 10.1016/j.micron.2016.05.008. Epub 2016 May 27.

Authors

Ouliana Panova¹, X Chelsea Chen², Karen C Bustillo³, Colin Ophus³, Mahesh P Bhatt⁴, Nitash Balsara⁵, Andrew M Minor⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
² Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
³ National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁴ Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA; Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA; National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. Electronic address: aminor@lbl.gov.

PMID: 27323282
DOI: 10.1016/j.micron.2016.05.008

Abstract

We demonstrate a scanning electron nanobeam diffraction technique that can be used for mapping the size and distribution of nanoscale crystalline regions in a polymer blend. In addition, it can map the relative orientation of crystallites and the degree of crystallinity of the material. The model polymer blend is a 50:50w/w mixture of semicrystalline poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) and amorphous polystyrene (PS). The technique uses a scanning electron beam to raster across the sample and acquires a diffraction image at each probe position. Through image alignment and filtering, the diffraction image dataset enables mapping of the crystalline regions within the scanned area and construction of an orientation map.

Keywords: Crystal orientation; Diffraction; Locally resolved structure; P3HT; Polymers; STEM; Spatially resolved; TEM.