HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGE SIMULATIONS OF SMALL METAL PARTICLES

The results of extensive multislice simulations of decahedral and icosahedral multiply twinned and face centred cubic (FCC) cuboctahedral particles are presented for a matrix of both high- and low-symmetry orientations. For the high-symmetry axes the image contrast is confirmed as being directly interpretable in terms of the projected charge density of the structure, whereas the lower symmetry orientations give rise to complex contrast. In the case of the FCC based morphology the effects of contrast due to formally forbidden reflections is also investigated. The results of this study have allowed a larger number of particles to be positively identified than has previously been possible and experimental images of particles in both high- and low-symmetry orientations are shown.