Origin of atomic displacement in HAADF image of the tilted specimen.

The effect of the tilt of the crystallographic orientation with respect to an incident electron probe on high-angle annular dark field (HAADF) imaging in aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is investigated in experiment and simulation. A small specimen tilt can lead to unequal deviations of different atom species in the HAADF image and result in further relative displacement between anion and cation. Simulated HAADF images also confirm that the crystal tilt causes an artifact in atom polarization. The effect is derived from the scattering abilities of different atoms.