Multimodal x-ray and electron microscopy of the Allende meteoriteOPEN ACCESS 

Yuan Hung Lo, Chen-Ting Liao, Jihan Zhou, Arjun Rana, Charles S. Bevis, Guan Gui, Bjoern Enders, Kevin M. Cannon, Young-Sang Yu, Richard Celestre, Kasra Nowrouzi, David Shapiro, Henry Kapteyn, Roger Falcone, Chris Bennett, Margaret Murnane, Jianwei Miao

Science Advances 20 Sep 2019:
Vol. 5, no. 9, eaax3009
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax3009

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“Multimodal microscopy that combines complementary nanoscale imaging techniques is critical for extracting comprehensive chemical, structural, and functional information, particularly for heterogeneous samples. X-ray microscopy can achieve high-resolution imaging of bulk materials with chemical, magnetic, electronic, and bond orientation contrast, while electron microscopy provides atomic-scale spatial resolution with quantitative elemental composition. Here, we combine x-ray ptychography and scanning transmission x-ray spectromicroscopy with three-dimensional energy-dispersive spectroscopy and electron tomography to perform structural and chemical mapping of an Allende meteorite particle with 15-nm spatial resolution. We use textural and quantitative elemental information to infer the mineral composition and discuss potential processes that occurred before or after accretion. We anticipate that correlative x-ray and electron microscopy overcome the limitations of individual imaging modalities and open up a route to future multiscale nondestructive microscopies of complex functional materials and biological systems.”