Local, atomic-level elastic strain measurements of metallic glass thin films by electron diffraction

A novel technique is used to measure the atomic-level elastic strain tensor of amorphous materials by tracking geometric changes of the first diffuse ring of selected area electron diffraction patterns (SAD). An automatic procedure, which includes locating the centre and fitting an ellipse to the diffuse ring with sub-pixel precision is developed for extracting the 2-dimensional strain tensor from the SAD patterns. Using this technique, atomic-level principal strains from micrometre-sized regions of freestanding amorphous Ti_0.45Al_0.55 thin films were measured during in-situ TEM tensile deformation. The thin films were deformed using MEMS based testing stages that allow simultaneous measurement of the macroscopic stress and strain. The calculated atomic-level principal strains show a linear dependence on the applied stress, and good correspondence with the measured macroscopic strains. The calculated Poisson's ratio of 0.23 is reasonable for brittle metallic glasses. The technique yields a strain accuracy of about 1×10⁻⁴ and shows the potential to obtain localized strain profiles/maps of amorphous thin film samples. - Highlights: • A TEM method to measure elastic strain in metallic glass films is proposed. • Method is based on tracking geometric changes in TEM diffraction patterns. • An automatic procedure is developed for extracting the local strain tensor. • Atomic-level strain in amorphous TiAl film was analysed during in-situ deformation. • Capability of the method to obtain micrometer scale strain profiles/maps is shown.