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Identification of the glassy state in nanoparticles by transmission electron microscopy

Identification of amorphous phases in nanoparticles by atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) requires analyses such as tilt-angle-dependent TEM imaging and single-nanoparticle electron diffraction, rather than relying on a single TEM image.

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Fig. 1: Imaging at multiple tilt angles is necessary for ruling out the false appearance of an amorphous structure.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. CHE-2438061. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the US Department of Energy or the United States Government.

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Correspondence to Francis M. Alcorn or Prashant K. Jain.

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Nature Materials thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Alcorn, F.M., Jain, P.K. Identification of the glassy state in nanoparticles by transmission electron microscopy. Nat. Mater. 24, 980–982 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02260-4

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