Quantitative nanoscale analysis in 3D using electron tomography

State-of-the-art electron tomography has been established as a powerful tool to image complex structures with nanometer resolution in 3D. Especially STEM tomography is used extensively in materials science in such diverse areas as catalysis, semiconductor materials, and polymer composites mainly providing qualitative information on morphology, shape and distribution of materials. However, for an increasing number of studies quantitative information, e.g. surface area, fractal dimensions, particle distribution or porosity are needed. A quantitative analysis is typically performed after segmenting the tomographic data, which is one of the main sources of error for the quantification. In addition to noise, systematic errors due to the missing wedge and due to artifacts from the reconstruction algorithm itself are responsible for these segmentation errors and improved algorithms are needed. This presentation will provide an overview of the possibilities and limitations of quantitative nanoscale analysis by electron tomography. Using catalysts and nano composites as applications examples, intensities and intensity variations observed for the 3D volume reconstructed by WBP and SIRT will be quantitatively compared to alternative reconstruction algorithms; implications for quantification of electron (or X-ray) tomographic data will be discussed and illustrated for quantification of particle size distributions, particle correlations, surface area, and fractal dimensions in 3D.