Diffraction From Materials

This volume expands and updates the coverage in the authors' classic 1992 book, "Electron Microdiffraction." As the title implies, the focus of the book has changed from electron microdiffraction, or convergent beam electron diffraction, to electron nanodiffraction and the applications of electron diffraction from single crystals as well as general structure analysis of single crystals, powders, and nanostructures.

This thesis describes key contributions to the fundamental understanding of materials structure and dynamics from a microscopic perspective. In particular, the thesis reports several advancements in time-domain methodologies using ultrafast pulses from X-ray free-electron lasers (FEL) to probe the interactions between electrons and phonons in photoexcited materials. Using femtosecond time-resolved X-ray diffraction, the author quantifies the coherent atomic motion trajectory upon sudden excitation of carriers in SnSe. This allows the reconstruction of the nonequilibrium lattice structure and identification of a novel lattice instability towards a higher-symmetry structure not found in equilibrium. This is followed by an investigation of the excited-state phonon dispersion in SnSe using time-resolved X-ray diffuse scattering which enables important insight into how photoexcitation alters the strength of specific bonds leading to the novel lattice instability observed in X-ray diffraction.

Developing and testing novel energetic materials is an expanding branch of the materials sciences. Reaction, detonation or explosion of such materials invariably produce extremely high pressures and temperatures. To study the equations-of-state (EOS) of energetic materials in extreme regimes both shock and static high pressure studies are required.

This book is built on the recent advancements in understanding thermoplasmonics and highlights the exciting new directions that are shaping this field. Thermoplasmonics using light to heat nanostructures is a promising and rapidly expanding subfield of plasmonics. When the light frequency matches the oscillation frequency of free electrons on the nanostructures, it induces a collective oscillation known as plasmon resonance.