Recent developments have improved the attainable energy resolution in electron energy-loss spectroscopy in aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy to the order of 10 meV. In principle, this allows spectroscopy and imaging of crystals using the phonon sector of the energy-loss spectrum at atomic resolution, a supposition supported by recent simulations for molecules. Here we show that the “quantum excitation of phonons” model encapsulates the physics necessary to simulate the atomic resolution imaging of crystals based on phonon excitation and we explore the predictions of such simulations.

• Received 11 February 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.144108