Artificial Intelligence-Driven Smart Scan: A Rapid, Automatic Approach for Comprehensive Imaging and Spectroscopy for Fast Compositional Analysis

Abstract

Nanomaterial properties and functionalities are influenced by their shape, size, and chemical composition. The importance of these parameters highlights the need for a statistically robust analysis of a large particle population, necessitating automation. This study introduces a neural network-empowered smart scan technique that achieves a relative increase in speed compared to traditional energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) mapping. The main advantage is that it reduces the required dose, decreasing potential damage to the sample by avoiding unnecessary exposure. It holds potential use in other multimodal scanning transmission electron microscopy or scanning-based imaging approaches. In the first example, identifying particles in a matrix with a trained neural network reduces the acquisition time by two orders of magnitude. This acceleration enables a statistical compositional analysis of thousands of particles in less than 1 h. Similar improvements are observed for atomic resolution. The discrete positions of atoms identified by the trained network allow for selective EDX sampling at these centers, thereby identifying the atomic species of the column with much-reduced sampling. Consequently, a lower sampling dose is required, enabling mapping of more delicate materials with high lateral resolution and at a high statistical confidence interval. Even though manual training is still required, this approach greatly benefits repetitive quality control tasks.