3D Atomic Reconstructions of Er:CeO₂ with Multislice Electron Ptychography

Dopant atoms within crystalline materials generate the interesting quantum phenomena that underpin qubits, quantum memory, and quantum network devices.  Understanding how the dopants impact the material structure at the atomic scale will improve manufacturing techniques and aid in discovery of new materials with similar properties. Phase retrieval techniques, such as multislice electron ptychography (MEP) [1], can reconstruct the full 3D atomic potential of a sample with only a single four dimensional scanning transmission electron microscope (4D-STEM) dataset. In this talk, we will explore the use of MEP to locate dopant atoms in cerium oxide dopped with erbium—a candidate material for quantum networks [2]. We use atomic coordinates from density functional theory (DFT) to understand how the defects affect local properties such as strain, which could modify spin to photon interactions in future quantum networks.