A nanofabricated, monolithic, path-separated electron interferometer
Author(s)
Dyck, Dirk van; Agarwal, Akshay; Kim, Chungsoo; Hobbs, Richard; Berggren, Karl K
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Progress in nanofabrication technology has enabled the development of numerous electron optic elements for enhancing image contrast and manipulating electron wave functions. Here, we describe a modular, self-aligned, amplitude-division electron interferometer in a conventional transmission electron microscope. The interferometer consists of two 45-nm-thick silicon layers separated by 20 μm. This interferometer is fabricated from a single-crystal silicon cantilever on a transmission electron microscope grid by gallium focused-ion-beam milling. Using this interferometer, we obtain interference fringes in a Mach-Zehnder geometry in an unmodified 200 kV transmission electron microscope. The fringes have a period of 0.32 nm, which corresponds to the [111] lattice planes of silicon, and a maximum contrast of 15%. We use convergent-beam electron diffraction to quantify grating alignment and coherence. This design can potentially be scaled to millimeter-scale, and used in electron holography. It could also be applied to perform fundamental physics experiments, such as interaction-free measurement with electrons.
Date issued
2017-05Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceJournal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Agarwal, Akshay et al. "A nanofabricated, monolithic, path-separated electron interferometer." Scientific Reports 7, 1 (May 2017): 1677 © 2017 The Author(s)
Version: Final published version
ISSN
2045-2322