Three-dimensional surface topography of graphene by divergent beam electron diffraction

There are only a handful of scanning techniques that can provide surface topography at nanometre resolution. At the same time, there are no methods that are capable of non-invasive imaging of the three-dimensional surface topography of a thin free-standing crystalline material. Here we propose a new technique—the divergent beam electron diffraction (DBED) and show that it can directly image the inhomogeneity in the atomic positions in a crystal. Such inhomogeneities are directly transformed into the intensity contrast in the first-order diffraction spots of DBED patterns and the intensity contrast linearly depends on the wavelength of the employed probing electrons. Three-dimensional displacement of atoms as small as 1 angstrom can be detected when imaged with low-energy electrons (50–250 eV). The main advantage of DBED is that it allows visualization of the three-dimensional surface topography and strain distribution at the nanometre scale in non-scanning mode, from a single shot diffraction experiment.