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Multislice hollow ptychography for simultaneous atomic-layer-resolved three-dimensional structural imaging and spectroscopy

Yu Lei1 and Peng Wang1,2,*

  • *Contact author: peng.wang.3@warwick.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 034066 – Published 28 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/by27-b9mc

Abstract

Electron-matter interactions produce elastic and inelastic scattering, forming the basis for imaging and spectroscopy in electron microscopy. However, integrating electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) with 4D-STEM and ptychography remains challenging due to detector geometry conflicts. Hollow ptychography introduced by Song et al., which uses a central aperture to allow low-angle electrons into the EELS spectrometer, suffers from multiple scattering in thicker samples. We propose multislice hollow ptychography (MHP), which incorporates a multislice model to address dynamical scattering and enables robust high-resolution imaging from hollow diffraction patterns while supporting simultaneous EELS acquisition. MHP achieves sub-ångström lateral resolution at intermediate doses (104–108  e−/Å2) and enables full three-dimensional (3D) atomic-layer reconstruction at ultrahigh doses (≥108  e−/Å2), limited only by lattice vibrations. Of note, up to 70% of electrons remain available for spectroscopy. This flexible and dose-efficient framework supports correlative 3D imaging and chemical mapping, opening new possibilities for analyzing complex energy and quantum materials.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 26, 034066– Published 28 September, 2026
  • Received 9 August 2025
  • Revised 12 June 2026
  • Accepted 10 August 2026
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