Analytical transmission electron microscopy for emerging advanced materials

Summary With remarkable achievements in spatial resolution and its derived analytical techniques, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has been capable of probing enriched information of materials at the atomic scale. Nevertheless, there seems to be a gap that hinders the further application of TEM-related techniques in the field of emerging advanced materials. This review presents the basic principles and functionalities of analytical TEM techniques in characterizing emerging materials. We focus on the advanced TEM techniques that, not only for observing the atoms or lattice, but also for providing deep insights from the TEM data. We categorize the recently prevalent analytical TEM techniques into advanced scanning TEM (STEM) resolving techniques, STEM-related data-processing techniques, electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) techniques, and in situ TEM techniques. This review is expected to promote the utilization of analytical TEM techniques in materials research and therefore to gain insights into the structure-performance relationships of emerging advanced materials.