In a near future, solving the atomic three dimensional structure of a small object like a nanostructure, will be possible. This will help to optimise devices, make them smaller, more efficient and cheaper. This PhD work will contribute to this adventure by developing a rather new transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique : the electron coherent diffractive imaging (E-CDI), which consists in computing an image from a diffraction pattern.

This PhD will thus explore the different ways to link ‘image and diffraction’ in order to improve our knowledge of nanostructures like the 3 dimensional shape of the object, its defects and its strain. This PhD is included in professor Zuo’s chair of excellence project, whose aim is to stimulate CDI research in Grenoble. Within this project, in parallel to the TEM work of the PhD student, similar experiments using CDI with X-ray nanobeam (i.e. X-CDI.) will be realised at the European Synchrotron Facility (ESRF).

Most of the PhD will take place at Minatec, CEA-Grenoble, but several months will be spent in Pr Zuo’s lab at the university of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. The student will work on state-of-the-art microscopes having aberration correctors. The PhD will have an experimental part at the electron microscopes and an important part of data analysis. Algorithms will be mainly developed by Pr. Zuo’s group and X-ray specialist (Dr Favre-Nicolin), but it would be nice that the student participate also in this theoretical developments.

Two kinds of model samples will be studied : semiconductor nanowires and biopolymer crystals. The same samples will be experimentally observed by TEM by the PhD student and by X-ray at ESRF. The collaborations with ESRF and Pr. Zuo’s group will be strong.