Nanoscale subparticle imaging of vibrational dynamics using dark-field ultrafast transmission electron microscopy

Ling Tong, Jun Yuan, Zhiwei Zhang, Jau Tang, Zhiwei Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

An understanding of nanoscale energy transport and acoustic response
is important for applications of nanomaterials but hinges on a complete characterization of their structural dynamics. The precise determination of the structural dynamics within nanoparticles, however, is still challenging and requires high spatiotemporal resolution and detection sensitivity.
Here we present a centred dark-field imaging approach based on ultrafast transmission electron microscopy that is capable of directly mapping
the picosecond-scale evolution of intrananoparticle vibration with a
spatial resolution down to 3 nm. Using this approach, we investigated
the photo-induced vibrational dynamics in individual gold heterodimers composed of a nanoprism and a nanosphere. We observed not only the retardation of in-plane vibrations in the nanoprisms, which we attribute
to thermal and vibrational energy transferred from adjacent nanospheres mediated by surfactants, but also the existence of a complex multimodal oscillation and its spatial variation within individual nanoprisms. This work represents an advance in real-space mapping of vibrational dynamics on the subnanoparticle level with a high detection sensitivity.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages10
JournalNature Nanotechnology
Volume17
Issue number12
Early online date12 Dec 2022
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 12 Dec 2022

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