Local symmetry breaking of a thin crystal structure of β-Si3N4 as revealed by spherical aberration corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy images.

This report is an extension of the study for structural imaging of 5-6 nm thick β-Si(3)N(4) [0001] crystal with a spherical aberration corrected transmission electron microscope by Zhang and Kaiser [2009. Structure imaging of β-Si(3)N(4) by spherical aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. Ultramicroscopy 109, 1114-1120]. In this work, a local symmetry breaking with an uneven resolution of dumbbells in the six-membered rings revealed in the reported images in the study of Zhang and Kaiser has been analyzed in detail. It is found that this local asymmetry in the image basically is not relevant to a slight mistilt of the specimen and/or a beam tilt (coma). Rather the certain variation of the tetrahedral bond length of Si-N(4) in the crystal structure is found to be responsible for the uneven resolution with a local structural variation from region to region. This characteristic of the variation is also supposed to give a distorted lattice of apparently 2°-2.5° deviations from the perfect hexagonal unit cell as observed in the reported image in the work of Zhang and Kaiser. It is discussed that this variation may prevail only in a thin specimen with a thickness ranging ~≤ 5-6 nm. At the same time, it is noted that the average of the bond length variation is close to the fixed length known in a bulk crystal of β-Si(3)N(4).